The 
Maid  He  Married 


.. 

Harriet&escottSpofforcl 


fiLUE  CLOTH  BOOKS 


FLORENCE-AMD 
IRVIN-5HUPPJR 


BLUE  CLOTH  BOOKS 

0# 

THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 


BLUE  CLOTH  BOOKS 


OLIVER  IVERSON 

His  adventures  during  four  days 
and  nights  in  the  City  of  New 
York  in  April  of  the  year  1890 
by  Ann  Devoore 

A  LITTLE  LEGACY  AND  OTHER  STORIES 
by  Mrs.  L.  B.  Walford 

THE  MAID  HE  MARRIED 

by  Harriet  Prescott  Spofford 

A  JUNE  ROMANCE 

by  Norman  Gale 

A  HEAVEN-KISSING  HILL 

by  Julia  Magruder 


HERBERT  S.  STONE  AND  COMPANY 
CHICAGO  AND  NEW  YORK 


The 

Maid  He  Married 


Harriet  Prescott  Spofford 


HERBERT  S.  STONE  AND  COMPANY 

CHICAGO  AND  NEW  YORK 

MDCCCXCIX 


/T3 

is-\ 

jT£ 


COPYRIGHT     1899,    BY 
HERBERT  S.   STONE  &  CO 


THANKS    ARE    DUE    TO    MESSRS.     HARPER 

AND   BROTHERS    FOR   THE    COURTESY    OF 

REPUBLICATION 


The  Maid  He  Married 


One  world  is  as  large  as  another  to 
those  that  are  in  it,  and  events  of  the 
smallest  nature,  if  they  are  close 
enough  to  the  eye,  can  shut  off  the 
great  sun  himself. 

It  was  not,  however,  by  any  means 
a  small  event  that  had  made  a  stir  in 
Mrs.  Grey's  family.  It  was  one  with 
far-reaching  results.  For  Joseph- 
ine's Aunt  Josephine  had  committed 
the  inconceivable  folly  of  marrying 
again.  Inconceivable  because,  as 
Mrs.  Grey  said,  a  woman  past  forty 
could  not  expect  and  need  not  pre- 
tend love,  especially  for  a  person 
she  did  not  know  six  weeks  ago ;  and 
she  had  already  sufficient  income  for 
the  narrow  village  life,  and  was  not 


2  THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

driven  to  the  crime,    as  her   sister 
phrased  it,  through  want. 

But  Josephine's  aunt  did  not  look 
at  the  affair  at  all  in  that  light.  She 
had  been  a  good  wife  to  the  shop- 
keeping  deacon,  who,  if  he  filled  her 
small  early  ideal,  had,  on  the  whole, 
been  a  disappointment  to  her  ca- 
pacity for  growth.  She  had  saved 
and  spared  with  him  for  years,  years 
in  which,  however,  she  had  always 
pitched  her  housekeeping  on  a  some- 
what higher  key  than  that  of  any  one 
else  in  the  place;  where  Dr.  Madden, 
and  the  minister  had  always  found 
her  companionable.  But,  neverthe- 
less, she  was  dissatisfied.  She  had 
desired  something  beyond  this,  a 
different  life ;  one,  at  any  rate,  that 
could  better  meet  her  instinct  for 
the  beautiful,  her  fancy  for  luxury. 
The  monotony  of  the  years,  the 
poverty  of  thought  and  of  occurrence 
were  stupefying.  She  felt  herself 
sinking  to  the  level  of  an  animal 


THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED  3 

existence.  She  saved  herself,  she 
imagined,  by  letting  the  larger  life 
of  the  world  of  wealth  and  state  con- 
trol her  thoughts. 

She  had  had  time  to  read  much  of 
this  great  world,  and  she  knew  how 
one  should  conduct  one's  self  in  it,  if 
one  were  only  there.  And  now, 
having  taken  the  bold  step  of  going 
to  a  not  very  distant  town  to  collect 
a  small  debt,  she  had  found  herself 
in  the  house  with  a  something  more 
than  middle-aged  gentleman  of 
leisure,  whose  carriage  had  broken 
down  while  he  was  driving  through 
the  hills  with  a  party,  the  others  of 
the  party  having  gone  on  and  left 
him  with  his  servant,  and  a  fracture 
of  the  ankle,  and  a  very  sore  and 
angry  spirit. 

That  Frances  had  not  waited  for 
him  was  a  source  of  indignant  feel- 
ing with  Mr.  Applegate;  that  she 
could  have  been  so  indifferent  to 
his  pain  and  his  loneliness  out- 


4  THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

raged  him.  It  is  true  that  Daniel 
was  of  far  more  service.  But  it 
was  the  duty  of  Frances.  Yet,  of 
course,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that 
she  would  leave  a  company  where 
an  English  earl  made  one,  for  the 
sake  of  any  old  father.  Mr.  Apple- 
gate  revised  his  politics  on  the  spot, 
and  if  there  had  been  a  faction  with  a 
platform  proposing  the  abolition  of 
English  earls,  he  would  have  voted 
its  straight  ticket.  As  he  could  not 
do  that,  he  did  the  next  best  thing, 
and  made  Daniel's  life  a  burden  to 
him,  although  previously  he  had  felt 
it  greatly  to  Daniel's  credit  that  he 
was  an  Englishman. 

Straightway,  when  Josephine's 
aunt  had  taken  in  the  situation,  she 
saw  her  opportunity.  She  delayed 
in  the  place  beyond  her  first  inten- 
tion. She  showed  a  kindly  sympathy 
in  a  gentle,  womanly  way  that  was 
very  acceptable.  She  amused  Mr. 
Applegate  with  a  gift  of  mimicry  she 


5 


had.  She  told  him  stories.  She  let 
him  tell  stories  to  her.  She  flattered 
him  quietly,  and  more  by  hint  than 
by  token.  She  read  to  him.  She 
commented  on  the  daily  news  in  a 
rather  large-minded  fashion.  She 
made  him  feel  awake  and  alive  and 
pleased  with  himself — pleased,  too, 
with  a  certain  piquancy  in  her  rustic 
air,  and  her  still  rather  remarkable 
beauty.  She  brought  him  wild  flowers 
from  her  rambles,  and  knew  things 
about  them  unknown  to  him.  And 
when  he  made  a  wry  face  at  his 
tisanes  and  potages,  she  begged  to 
be  allowed  to  oversee  the  preparation 
of  certain  toothsome  messes  after  her 
own  recipes.  In  fact,  she  rendered 
herself  so  agreeable,  prolonging  her 
own  stay  as  if  she  were  there  only 
for  the  mountain  air,  that  he  asked 
himself  seriously  why  he  should  not 
secure  such  a  pleasant,  cheerful, 
wholesome,  capable  companion  for 
the  remainder  of  his  rather  lonely 


6  THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

days,  pestered  out  of  his  life  as  he 
was  by  Frances  and  Laura.  It  is 
true  that  Frances  and  Laura  were 
married,  and  off  his  hands  ostensibly ; 
but,  for  all  that,  they  had  not 
relinquished  their  old  rule,  and  their 
father  frequently  had  occasion,  re- 
membering his  youthful  studies  in 
physics,  to  recognize  that,  so  far  as 
the  government  of  him  and  his  house 
was  concerned,  what  was  lost  in 
velocity  was  gained  in  force  by  them 
through  the  possibilities  of  their 
marriages.  And  presently  he  asked 
Josephine's  aunt  the  same  question 
that  he  had  asked  himself,  pressing 
his  suit  as  she  retired  from  it,  and 
although  finally  carrying  the  day, 
yet  feeling  that  he  did  so  with  diffi- 
culty. 

"It  is  not,"  said  Mr.  Applegate, 
"as  if  I  were  a  poor  man.  My 
children  will  have  no  right  to  object 
to  anything  I  do.  There  is  plenty 
for  all.  Fortune  has  been  kind  to 


7 


me — fortune,  and  my  father,  and  my 
grandfather,  and  the  stock  market. 
I  am  a  very  rich  man,  you  know — ' ' 

"You  are  not  rich  enough  to  buy 
me,"  said  Josephine's  aunt. 

"By  Heaven!"  said  Mr.  Apple- 
gate.  "It  takes  a  woman  to  twist  a 
man '  s  meaning !  I  said  nothing  of  the 
sort!  Do  you  suppose — " 

"I  suppose,"  she  said,  laying  her 
soft,  cool  hand  on  his,  "that  you  will 
never  get  well  if  you  excite  yourself 
in  this  way. ' ' 

' '  You  excite  me !  I  beg  you  to 
share  my  home,  my  fortune ;  I  offer 
you  settlements,  and  you  say — ' ' 

"No,  indeed,  I  don't  say — "  She 
interrupted  him,  smiling. 

"That  is  the  truth,"  he  muttered. 
"You  don't  say!"  And  then  she 
brought  him  a  light  for  his  cigar. 

"I  am  an  old  man,"  said  Mr. 
Applegate,  presently,  looking  at  the 
end  of  his  cigar  a  little  sadly.  "I 
mean,  I — I  am  getting  to  be  an  old 


8  THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED 

man.  My  daughters —  Well,  love 
goes  down,  not  up,  you  know.  Not 
that  I  complain.  They  are  good 
girls,  well  established.  But  I  con- 
fess I  have  thought  what  home 
might  be  in  these  coming  days  if  a 
woman,  a  cheery,  happy  woman, 
pleasant  to  the  eye,  whose  voice  was 
music,  whose  touch  was  like  velvet, 
as  yours  is — ' ' 

' '  Ah,  yes, ' '  she  sighed.  "  It  is  not 
natural.  It  is  so  sad  to  be  alone.  I, 
too,  have  had  dreams — dreams  of  a 
home,"  she  said,  resting  her  hand- 
some head  on  her  shapely  hand,  as  if 
looking  into  the  heart  of  the  dreams, 
"where  I  was  the  sunshine — " 

"Yes,  the  sunshine,"  said  Mr. 
Applegate. 

And  neither  of  the  reprobates 
remembered  just  then  their  youth. 

"It  is  absurd,"  said  Josephine's 
aunt.  "At  my  age." 

"I  do  not  consider  it  absurd  at  my 
age,"  said  Mr.  Applegate. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED  9 

"With  all  the  world  laughing," 
said  she. 

"Let  those  laugh  that  win,"  said 
he. 

And  Mr.  Applegate  won.  And  he 
called  in  the  clergyman,  and  mar- 
ried her  upon  the  spot;  a  little  afraid 
of  Daniel,  but  warmed  by  that  func- 
tionary's apparent  approval,  and 
possibly  the  least  in  the  world  grati- 
fied by  the  thought  that  Frances 
would  rue  the  day  when  she  drove 
on  and  left  him  alone.  He  was 
obliged  for  some  weeks  yet  to 
remain  where  he  was,  weeks  in 
which  he  found  himself  very  well 
pleased  with  his  quite  debonair  and 
delightful  wife,  going  abroad  with 
her  afterwards  for  a  rather  extended 
European  tour,  where,  taking  hold 
of  the  new  life  with  all  the  grace 
and  strength  that  might  have  be- 
longed to  her  youth,  she  made  fine 
friends,  managed  to  have  herself 
presented  at  more  than  one  court, 


IO         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

and  saw  and  absorbed  much  that 
stood  her  in  good  stead  when  they 
returned  and  she  was  installed  among 
the  lares  and  penates  of  her  hus- 
band's home. 

Triumphant  and  happy  as  she  was 
in  many  ways,  yet  Mrs.  Applegate 
did  not  find  that  the  roses  strewing 
her  path  were  without  thorns.  Her 
husband's  people  did  not  receive  her 
with  open  arms,  so  to  say.  Frances 
had  had  to  take  her  family  out  of  her 
father's  house,  where  she  had  lived 
since  her  marriage,  in  order  that 
Mrs.  Applegate  should  come  into  it ; 
and  she  was  so  decidedly  inimi- 
cal as  to  make  it  unpleasant;  and 
none  of  the  other  gentle-mannered 
and  distant  individuals  gave  her 
much  chance  of  conquering  them 
with  kindness,  as  she  had  meant  to 
do.  But  as  Mr.  Applegate  an- 
nounced with  emphasis  that  those 
who  did  not  like  his  behavior  could 
drop  his  acquaintance,  and  as  few,  in 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         II 

view  of  future  financial  possibilities, 
wished  to  follow  that  course,  there 
was  an  adaptation  to  circumstances 
with  sufficient  outward  show  to 
escape  his  criticism.  But  Mrs. 
Applegate  had  a  certain  comfort  in 
knowing  that  it  was  not  those  old 
days  of  stiletto  and  goblet,  when  the 
grasp  might  press  the  spring  of 
Borgian  rings  with  unpleasant  re- 
sults upon  the  unwelcome  hand. 
Not  that  any  of  these  good  people 
would  have  done  such  a  thing  for 
the  world  and  all  the  worlds;  but 
their  tears,  had  some  one  else  done 
it,  were  problematical. 

Although  it  was  not  to  be  open 
war,  still  this  sort  of  armed  neutral- 
ity was  not  what  a  social,  cheerful 
person  like  Mrs.  Applegate  coveted. 
And,  moreover,  she  had  to  confess, 
Mr.  Applegate  himself  was  not  all 
that  fancy  had  painted  him  when  it 
had  seemed  worth  while  to  make 
herself  so  invaluable  to  him  in  the 


12         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

mountain  cottage,  where  the  vast 
purple  masses  stood  like  a  wall  be- 
tween them  and  the  world  and  its 
carping.  If,  indeed,  she  had  not 
painted  anything  very  godlike,  yet 
she  had  hardly  dreamed  he  could  be 
so  abrupt,  so  lordly,  so  changeable. 
For  what  Mr.  Applegate  wanted,  he 
wanted  now ;  he  stormed  on  occasion, 
and  exploded  in  strong  language  fre- 
quently. Sometimes  he  hated  his 
people;  but  it  was  not  safe  to  pre- 
sume on  that,  for  just  as  often  he 
loved  them.  Sometimes  his  sons-in- 
law  were  reckless  spendthrifts  who 
should  not  have  a  dollar  of  his  money 
to  throw  away ;  and  sometimes  they 
developed  such  a  love  of  money,  in 
his  view,  that  he  was  resolved  his 
property  should  never  be  turned  to 
their  miserly  uses.  He  bemoaned 
the  absence  of  young  life  in  the 
house,  threatened  to  adopt  a  son  or 
a  daughter ;  and  always  seemed  to  be 
capable  of  doing  something  rash, 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         13 

whether  it  were  to  bury  himself  in 
the  depths  of  the  country  or  to  go 
up  in  the  first  balloon  coming  handy. 
Perhaps  she  had  expected  more 
flattery  than  she  received;  hardly 
more  caresses ;  but  she  certainly  had 
supposed  that  wealth  meant  the 
ability  to  spend  money ;  and  although 
in  the  beginning  she  had  intended 
to  give  her  little  income  to  her  dis- 
approving sister  Maria,  struggling 
with  her  growing  family,  she  had 
found  herself  obliged  to  reserve  it 
for  her  own  use,  in  order  that  she 
might  have  more  independence. 
Everything  was  very  fine  in  the 
house,  which  was  little  less  than  a 
palace;  and  her  husband  had  pro- 
vided for  her  with  such  liberal  pro- 
vision as  became  his  wife.  But  he 
required  every  month  a  strict  render- 
ing of  account.  It  was  his  habit ;  and 
as  he  had  grown  older  and  a  little 
testy  with  the  gout;  all  his  habits 
asserted  themselves  more  sharply. 


14         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Still,  that  was  only  vexatious.  And 
in  the  meantime  there  were  all  the 
luxuries  that  used  to  be  dear  to  her 
imagination,  and  now  were  dear  to 
her  soul — the  spacious  house  and  its 
sumptuous  belongings ;  the  rich  silks 
and  velvets,  furs  and  jewels,  that 
made  her  wonder  if  it  were  really 
she  wearing  them;  the  silent  and 
obsequious  servants;  the  carriages 
and  horses ;  and  all  the  equipage  of 
wealth.  And  if  the  family  were 
distant,  so  was  not  the  world  of 
her  husband's  acquaintance;  Mrs. 
Applegate  was  made  welcome  in 
society,  to  whose  methods  and  man- 
ners she  accommodated  herself  in  a 
way  that  won  her  husband's  com- 
plete admiration.  And  she  was 
always  more  fortified  than  otherwise 
by  the  fact  that  Daniel  was  her 
friend. 

Wise  in  her  day  and  generation, 
too,  Mrs.  Applegate  was  not  content 
now  with  any  subordinate  personal 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED          1 5 

position.  Her  new  acquaintances 
presently  found  her  at  the  front  in 
various  of  their  concerns.  The  Hos- 
pital  for  Forsaken  Babies  had  her 
regularly  appointed  mornings;  the 
Assembled  Alms  hardly  conducted  a 
meeting  without  her;  and  her 
carriage  was  as  often  seen  before 
the  door  of  the  Burden  Bearing 
Home,  and  that  of  the  Middle 
Aged  Ladies'  Rest  as  at  those  of  the 
great  entertainers.  She  had  private 
instruction,  that  she  might  lead  the 
applause  intelligently  at  the  Sym- 
phonies. She  became  the  patron  of 
a  young  violinist  and  an  old  artist 
who  dangled  in  her  train.  She  had 
a  pew  at  the  Incarnation  and  made 
Mr.  Applegate  occupy  it  with  her, 
and  embroidered  for  the  altar  a 
jeweled  cloth  too  splendid  for  any 
but  splendid  occasion.  She  gave  a 
collection  of  casts  from  the  antique 
to  the  neighboring  Woman's  Col- 
lege, and  was  the  grande  dame  of  the 


l6         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

occasion  on  its  first  public  holiday. 
She     persuaded     her     husband     to 
endow  a  scholarship  in  the  Univer- 
sity, and  she  was  much  more  the  star 
at    the   next    Commencement    than 
any  of  the  young  orators  there.     Her 
theatricals,  and  her  very  select  and 
secluded  nights  after  the  play,  when 
some  great  dancers   gave    pavanes 
and  corantos  in  a  wonderful  way  to 
wonderful  slow  music,  were  full  of 
ideas ;  and  she  was  the  commanding 
force     of     certain     phantasmagoric 
festivals  intended  to    promote    the 
love  of  art.     "What  Mrs.  Applegate 
says,  goes,"  her  husband  declared; 
and  he  felt  himself  pleased  with  her. 
But  when  the  novelty  had  dulled,  it 
remained  that  she  was  rather  a  soli- 
tary woman.     She  had  hardly  more 
than  a  friendly  regard  for  her  hus- 
band; and  when  he  was  crusty  with 
his  lame  leg,  or  tyrannical  with  the 
servants,    or     accurate     about    her 
money  matters,  she  had  hardly  that. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         17 

The  acquaintances  she  had  were  glad 
to  come  to  her  regal  dinners,  to  drop 
in  for  five-o'clock  tea  and  gossip,  to 
join  her  theater  parties.  But,  inter- 
ested in  the  people  they  had  always 
known,  not  one  among  them  would 
have  received  her  confidences  with 
sympathy  had  she  been  willing  to 
make  them.  And  then,  too,  there 
was  none  of  the  satisfaction  that 
might  be  hers  had  any  of  those  who 
had  once  known  the  deacon's  wife 
been  among  these  to  estimate  the 
apparent  triumph  of  it  all.  Her 
sister  Maria  had  thought  so  ill  of 
her  for  marrying,  and  had  so  plainly 
said  so,  that  she  did  not  feel  like 
telling  Maria  that  she  was  right ;  and, 
moreover,  Maria  was  not  a  person 
to  understand  her.  She  herself  had 
read  books  all  her  life  that  Maria 
had  never  had  time  to  read.  And 
she  had  always  had  a  daily  city  paper. 
She  had  made  the  poor  deacon  take 
her,  every  year,  for  one  or  two 


l8         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

short  journeys  where  a  day  and 
night  in  a  hotel  gave  her  familiarity 
with  a  great  deal  of  splendor  for  her 
money,  and  an  evening  at  the  theater 
had  given  her  hints  as  to  how  fine 
people  comported  themselves,  and 
had  enlarged  her  point  of  view.  And 
she  and  Maria  looked  at  the  world 
quite  differently,  anyway.  And  as 
Maria  would  not  have  understood 
her,  and  might  have  remarked  that 
as  she  had  made  her  bed  so  she  must 
lie  in  it,  there  was  no  use  in  telling 
Maria  that,  'after  all,  the  deacon's 
widow  in  the  little  country  town  was 
happier  than  Mr.  Applegate's  wife  in 
the  great  city,  with  an  overflowing 
share  of  the  great  city's  splendor. 
Once,  in  an  access  of  the  inner 
lonesomeness,  she  had  asked  Maria 
to  visit  her,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Maria,  good  plain  woman  as  she 
was,  with  her  hard  life  and  her 
restricted  views,  had  not  the  ap- 
pearance which  would  be  of  advan- 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         19 

tage  to  her  among  fashionable  folk. 
But  Maria  had  the  sense,  as  she 
assured  herself  on  reading  the  letter, 
to  know  when  she  was  well  off;  and 
she  declined  the  invitation,  but  told 
her  sister  to  run  up  to  her  whenever 
she  felt  as  if  blood  were  thicker  than 
water. 

One  day  Mrs.  Applegate  did  so, 
walking  from  the  station  to  Maria's 
door,  and  noting  curiously  how 
small  and  worn  things  looked  to  her, 
things  that  once  had  seemed  fine 
enough.  When  she  went  into  her 
sister's  house  her  ample  proportions 
and  flowing  draperies  seemed  to  fill 
it;  and  she  felt  that  she  had  never 
realized  how  low  the  room  was, 
how  narrow;  how  old  were  the 
chintz  lounges  and  chairs,  how  dull 
were  the  frames  of  her  father's  and 
her  mother's  wooden-looking  por- 
traits on  the  wall!  And  yet,  if  she 
should  send  up  new  frames  for  them, 
what  a  contrast  they  would  make 


2O         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

with  all  the  dingy  habit  of  the  place ! 
Her  flowing  skirt  with  its  fur 
borders,  her  sables,  her  plumes, 
seemed  to  her  perception  to  fill  the 
room;  but  to  that  of  her  nieces  it 
was  as  if  a  goddess  in  a  Worth  gown 
had  come  among  them.  And  then 
her  sister  hurried  in,  and  they  fell 
upon  each  other's  neck,  and  neither 
thought  whether  the  one  was  fine  or 
the  other  shabby.  It  was  "Jose- 
phine dear!"  and  "Maria  darling!" 
and  all  the  years  between  were  gone, 
and  all  the  difference  in  the  way  of 
life,  and  they  were  girls  again 
together. 

But,  after  all,  it  was  a  pleasant 
room.  Although  the  carpet  was  old 
and  the  chintz  was  faded,  yet  all  was 
old  and  faded  together;  an  English 
ivy  latticed  the  east  window  and 
met  the  long  stem  of  a  wax-plant, 
whose  fragrant  clusters  shed  over 
the  place  their  faint,  delicious  breath, 
and  the  sun  sifted  in  a  radiant  mass 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         21 

of  color  through  the  geraniums  and 
carnations  in  the  south  window, 
which  were  Josephine's  care  and 
pride.  The  dark  old  bookcase,  the 
dim  portraits,  the  quaint  looking- 
glass,  the  valanced  rocking-chair,  the 
ancient  low-boy,  gave  the  place  a 
look  of  rather  refined  comfort.  For 
a  moment  Mrs.  Applegate  longed 
to  throw  off  the  whole  Worth 
business,  and  sit  down  in  one  of 
Maria's  wrappers  and  feel  at  home, 
as  she  had  never  felt  since  she 
left  her  little  brown  house  across  the 
way — a  pleasant  little  house  with  its 
bay-window  and  piazza,  with  its 
front  yard  and  garden;  it  had 
seemed  a  paradise  when  she  went 
into  it  a  bride.  This  pretty  Jose- 
phine, her  niece,  was  her  very 
picture,  she  said  to  herself,  as  she 
looked  in  the  old  glad  days.  A 
pretty,  pretty  girl,  this  Josephine,  her 
namesake,  with  her  soft  hair,  thick  at 
its  parting,  in  a  great  knot  behind, 


and  like  a  gold  cloud  over  the  white 
forehead.  Why,  what  an  extraor- 
dinarily pretty  girl  she  was!  What 
eyes  those  were — great  lucent  hazel 
eyes,  trusting  eyes,  not  quite  so 
dark,  you  saw,  when  they  glanced 
up  appealingly,  as  the  brows  and 
lashes  made  them  look.  The  lines 
of  the  straight  nose  and  its  lightly 
curving  nostrils,  of  the  cheek  melt- 
ing into  the  chin  where  the  dimple 
continued  the  cleft  of  the  curling 
upper  lip  above  the  full  red  lower 
one — what  delicacy  there  was  in 
those  lines  as  she  smiled,  as  she 
laughed;  what  a  sweet,  half-mel- 
ancholy thing  was  the  wistful  look  of 
her  face  in  repose!  How  like  tiny 
pale  pink  shells  were  the  close-set 
ears!  Tall  for  her  years;— how  old 
was  she?  She  must  be  somewhere 
about  twenty — sweet  and  twenty. 
Well,  tall  enough;  and  the  shape- 
supple,  lithe,  well-rounded  perfec- 
tion. A  small  hand,  too;  rings 


23 

would  look  well  on  it; — to  be  sure, 
she  had  done  no  work  except  her 
school-teaching.  A  pretty  foot,  if  it 
were  well  shod. 

All  this  had  swept  through  Mrs. 
Applegate's  mind  in  the  time  that 
3he  was  kissing  her  niece,  holding  her 
off,  and  kissing  her  again.  Here 
was  a  find,  here  was  a  treasure,  she 
said  to  herself;  but  she  did  not  say 
it  to  any  one  else.  "Oh,  she  is  very 
fit!"  And  while  the  young  girl, 
filled  with  a  sense  of  undreamed 
wealth  in  the  touch  of  the  thick  furs, 
the  delicate  gloves,  in  the  waft  of 
violet  fragrance  among  the  chiffons, 
in  the  soft  pressure  of  the  cool  rich 
cheek,  admired  and  loved  her  aunt 
upon  the  spot,  the  younger  ones 
looked  with  speechless  awe  at  this 
beautiful  being,  this  fine  lady,  who 
had  done  something,  they  had  heard, 
something  of  which  their  mother  dis- 
approved, something  which  their 
mother  now  so  evidently  forgave 


24         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

that  it  could  not  be  anything  very 
untoward. 

But  the  pretty  Josephine  under- 
stood very  well  what  her  aunt  had 
done.  She  had  married  a  rich  man 
for  whom  she  did  not  particularly 
care ;  but  then,  it  was  not  to  be  sup- 
posed that  as  a  rule  people  did  par- 
ticularly care  when  they  were  near 
fifty;  and,  in  fact,  dim  in  interior 
consciousness  lay  the  belief  that 
when  people  were  near  fifty  they 
were  little  more  than  figure-heads, 
anyway,  to  fill  the  scene  for  those 
that  were  not  twenty.  She  had 
become  the  mistress  of  a  splendid 
house,  such  as  Josephine  had  read  of 
in  forbidden  novels;  she  had  horses 
and  carriages;  she  had  money  to 
spend,  and  nothing  to  do;  and  she 
wore  Russian  sables — and  Josephine 
felt  like  blowing  into  those  sables  to 
see  how  deep  and  soft  and  silkily 
the  fur  parted.  But  she  did  nothing 
of  the  kind  of  course.  No  one  knew 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         25 

better  than  Josephine  how  to  behave 
—was  she  not  a  little  school-ma'am? 
And  she  had  a  native  instinct  of 
good  manners,  a  tuneful  voice,  a 
gentle  movement,  an  innocent  qual- 
ity, and  as  much  tact  as  belongs 
righteously  to  any  young  girl.  She 
took  the  furs  from  her  aunt  and 
carried  them  off ;  and  the  other  girls, 
used  to  Josephine's  ways,  discreetly 
withdrew  with  her,  and  left  their 
mother  and  aunt  together,  while 
they  spread  a  luncheon  table,  as 
their  aunt  had  said  her  visit  was  but 
for  an  hour  or  two,  with  the  best 
they  had  and  in  the  best  way  they 
knew. 

It  pleased  Mrs.  Applegate  to  see 
the  natural  aptitude  for  fine  things 
and  polite  ways  that  Josephine  evi- 
dently possessed.  The  snowy  cloth 
and  the  simple  table  ornaments,  the 
flowers  hastily  cut  in  the  window, 
the  appetizing  dish,  the  daintily 
dressed  salad,  all  so  prettily  served 


26         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

on  what  was  left  of  the  china  that 
she  remembered  herself  when  a 
child, — Mrs.  Applegate  appreciated 
it.  She  went  soon  afterwards;  but 
she  left  behind  her  a  fund  of  interest 
and  gossip  for  many  a  day  thereafter ; 
and  she  had  given  Josephine  such  a 
careful,  searching  measurement  with 
her  well-trained  eyes  that  Josephine 
was  not  exactly  surprised  when,  a 
week  or  so  afterwards,  a  big  box  came 
to  her,  and  in  it  was  a  winter  suit  of 
dark  green  cloth  edged  with  seal,  a 
deep  seal  cape,  and  a  hat  whose  dark 
green  plumes  waving  round  her  face 
made  her  look  as  lovely  as  any 
picture  ever  painted. 

At  least  her  mother  thought  so, 
gazing  at  her  with  a  look  of  some 
alarm  over  the  possibilities  that 
struck  her  at  the  moment;  and  Will 
Marley  thought  so,  too,  without  an 
alarm  or  a  misgiving  of  any  sort. 
Why  should  he  have  a  misgiving? 
Had  it  not  been  so  long  understood 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         27 

between  Josephine  and  himself  that 
they  belonged  to  each  other — since 
his  early  days  at  the  Medical  School, 
indeed — that  it  was  now  like  one  of 
the  facts  of  the  universe,  no  more 
to  be  changed  than  the  rising  and 
the  setting  of  the  sun — they  who 
had  walked  together,  talked  to- 
gether, grown  together,  sat  on  the 
doorstep  together  with  the  rose 
over  the  lattice  making  the  night 
sweet  about  them,  silent  with  that 
fullness  of  joy  which  may  not  say  a 
word  lest  some  of  the  happiness  spill 
over  and  be  lost? 

Not  that  this  blissful  condition  had 
been  reached  without  struggle.  The 
young  medical  student  who  was  one 
day  to  take  old  Dr.  Madden 's  place, 
was  not  an  unimportant  person  in 
the  small  community,  and  this 
mother  had  smiled  on  him,  and  that 
aunt  had  bade  him  to  tea,  and  that 
father  had  asked  his  advice  and  con- 
sulted him  as  to  the  real  value  of  a 


28         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

horse-chestnut  or  a  small  potato 
carried  in  the  pocket  for  rheuma- 
tism. Nor  they  alone;  but  Mary 
Madden  had  repeated  her  father's 
invitation  to  use  his  books  when  he 
would,  and  the  skeleton  hanging  in 
the  study  there;  and  Julia  Lands 
had  knit  him  a  pair  of  silk  stockings 
with  her  own  fingers,  which,  owing 
to  their  usually  rough  condition,  had 
caught  so  badly  in  the  silk  as  to 
make  the  result  a  very  personal 
memento;  and  Amelie  Browne  had 
opened  a  dispute  with  him  and  had 
written  him  little  notes  on  pink 
paper  with  a  spray  of  roses  in  the 
corner,  winding  them  up  with  a 
French  phrase,  and  sealing  them 
with  wax,  which,  in  the  hateful  way 
wax  has  in  the  hands  of  a  novice, 
blotched  itself  far  outside  the  seal — 
the  seal  of  a  heart  and  arrow,  that 
in  the  dark  red  wax  had  a  frightfully 
realistic  suggestion  for  the  young 
surgeon.  And  even  Miss  Pearson, 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         29 

the  Academy  preceptress,  who  it 
was  well  known  could  speak  Pata- 
gonian,  had  there  been  any  one  to 
understand  her,  had  said  that  it  gave 
her  more  pleasure  to  talk  with  Will 
Marley  than  with  any  one  but  the 
minister.  She  talked  with  him  in 
English,  however. 


II 


It  might  have  turned  the  head  of 
any  one  else,  this  popularity  and 
kind  attention;  but  Will  Marley's 
head  was  a  very  level  one.  In  fact, 
when  he  accepted  Mary  Madden's 
invitation,  and  turned  over  the 
doctor's  books,  finding  them  rather 
out  of  date,  he  only  thought  how 
good-natured  she  was  to  add  her  in- 
vitation to  her  father's,  and  won- 
dered, very  privately,  and  as  it  were 
in  the  dark,  how  a  girl  could  be  so 
stupid  who  had  the  advantages  of 
those  books  and  that  skeleton.  As  for 
Julia's  knitting,  the  articles  were  so 
much  too  small  that  he  was  sure  she 
had  knit  them  for  her  young  brother, 
and  made  a  misfit,  and  given  them 
to  himself  only  to  prevent  waste; 
31 


32         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

and  disliking  such  obligation,  he 
had  wagered  a  half-dozen  balls  of 
silk  with  her  on  a  dead  certainty, 
and  lost  them.  And  neither  Amelie 
Browne's  notes  nor  any  of  the  sig- 
nificant flutterings  of  the  rest  of  the 
girls  in  their  totality,  were  of  any 
more  meaning  or  worth  to  him  than 
the  floating  of  motes  in  the  sunbeam 
— the  great  sunbeam  of  his  passion 
for  Josephine. 

And  Josephine,  going  and  coming 
from  her  school  with  the  children 
hanging  about  her,  had  seemed  at 
first  fine,  remote,  unapproachable. 
He  wondered  where  his  eyes  had 
been  that  he  had  not  seen  how 
fair  she  was  years  ago,  forgetting 
that  probably  years  ago  she  had  not 
been  so  fair,  and  that  he  had  been 
more  occupied  with  baseball  and 
football  than  with  any  girl's  beauty, 
were  she  as  fair  as  Fair  Rosamond. 
But  from  the  moment  the  gleam  of 
that  soft,  sweet  face  of  hers  first 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED       33 

touched  him,  the  world,  he  felt, 
would  be  a  blank  to  him  if  Jose- 
phine did  not  smile  on  him,  and  on 
him  alone  of  all  the  world  of  men. 

It  was  in  the  meeting-house  that 
fate  thus  overtook  him.  He  had 
gone  to  church  that  first  Sunday  of 
the  vacation,  and  had  heard  a  voice 
singing  the  solo  of  the  hymn,  during 
which  the  people  were  accustomed 
to  keep  their  seats.  He  had  turned 
quickly  for  a  glimpse  of  the  face, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  service — the 
prayer,  the  reading,  the  sermon — he 
heard  that  voice  go  on  fluting, 

"As  when  the  weary  traveler  gains 

The  height  of  some  commanding  hill, 
His  heart  revives  if  o'er  the  plains 
He  sees  his  home,  though  distant  still. " 

But  when  the  last  hymn  was  to  be 
sung,  and  the  congregation  stood  up 
and  turned,  facing  the  singing  seats, 
and  there,  beneath  the  brim  of  the 
little  white  chip  hat  with  its  pink 


34       THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

roses  and  black  velvet  bows,  he  saw 
the  face  for  more  than  a  glimpse,  it 
seemed  to  him  that  nothing  but  the 
hymn  which  she  was  singing  ex- 
pressed the  beauty  of  it, 

"By  cool  Siloam's  shady  rill 
How  fair  the  lily  grows, 
How  sweet  the  breath  beneath  the  hill 
Of  Sharon's  dewy  rose!" 

Could  it  be  possible  that  this  was 
Josephine  Grey — little  Josephine? 

Nothing  is  of  much  use  in  this 
world  if  courage  does  not  go  with  it. 
Will  Marley  called  his  courage  to 
the  front,  and  on  the  strength  of  old 
acquaintance  in  pinafores,  accosted 
this  young  woman  when  they  had 
both  reached  the  vestibule.  And  he 
was  none  the  less  charmed  with  her 
for  her  half-frightened  air,  like  that 
of  a  startled  fawn,  the  head  held 
high,  the  quick  averted  glance,  the 
rising  color.  And  directly  a  flock  of 
the  children  that  she  taught  on 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED        35 

week-days  gathered  around  her, 
claiming  her  as  their  own,  with 
delight  in  her  pretty  Sunday  trim ; 
and  although  Will  walked  home 
beside  her,  it  was  with  the  perpetual 
interruption  of  this  fluttering  crew, 
one  demanding  her  left  hand,  and 
another  pushing  in  between  them  to 
get  her  right  one,  and  a  third  skip- 
ping backward  before  them,  and 
stumbling  and  falling,  and  having 
to  be  picked  up  and  brushed  off  and 
soothed,  so  that  by  the  time  she 
reached  her  gate,  Will,  in  desperate 
mood,  declared  that  he  wished  there 
wasn't  a  child  in  the  world. 

"Then  what  should  I  do?"  asked 
the  little  school-teacher,  looking  up 
archly,  "without  a  hat  to  my 
head,"  adjusting  the  ribbons  the 
last  child  had  set  awry,  "or  a  shoe  to 
my  foot,"  and  she  thrust  out  the 
prettiest  little  foot  before  she 
thought,  and  drew  it  back  again  as 
quickly,  and  laughed  and  blushed, 


36         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

and  went  in  and  left  him  standing  in 
the  street,  feeling  in  the  first 
moment  as  if  something  before  un- 
seen by  mortal  had  but  just  passed 
by,  and  in  the  next  as  if  he  were  a 
gaping  fool. 

That  did  not  hinder  Will's  return- 
ing in  the  twilight  to  go  to  evening 
meeting  with  her.  But  her  mother 
and  the  younger  girls  were  with 
them  also,  and  Will  found  it  use- 
less to  try  for  the  place  beside  her. 
Now  Ellie's  shoe  was  untied,  and 
Josephine  had  to  stoop  and  tie  it  for 
her,  and  she  took  the  place  then  on 
the  other  side  of  her  mother ;  or  else 
Agnes  came  between  them  with  a 
persistence  that  demanded  punish- 
ment— all  the  more  punishment  that 
it  did  not  seem  to  trouble  Josephine ; 
or  else  both  Ellie  and  Agnes  insisted 
on  taking  their  sister's  hand.  And 
it  was  no  better  coming  home;  for 
that  great  lout  of  a  Rob  Campbell 
stepped  boldly  up  before  him  and 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED        37 

asked  to  see  her  home,  and  that  was 
the  end  of  it.  Will  had  some  con- 
solation in  thinking  of  Ellie  and 
Agnes;  but  that  was  nipped  in  the 
bud  when  Mrs.  Grey  took  Ellie  by 
one  hand  and  Agnes  by  the  other 
and  trudged  off  with  them ;  and  dark 
were  the  imprecations  then  which  he 
hurled  upon  the  head  of  the  happy 
and  unconscious  Rob,  who,  if  he  had 
known  of  it,  would  have  let  him  hurl 
on  with  pleasure,  so  long  as  he  him- 
self walked  by  Josephine's  side. 

The  next  day  it  was  no  better. 
Rob,  who  served  in  the  village 
variety  store,  was  at  the  gate  on 
some  errand  when  Will  came 
sauntering  down,  whipping  off  the 
tops  of  the  tall  grasses  with  his 
stick;  and  when  at  evening  he 
nerved  himself  to  call,  Rob  was  there 
before  him,  with  all  the  ease  of  an 
old  acquaintance.  It  was  idle  for 
Will  to  throw  himself  on  his  college- 
bred  dignity;  Rob's  jokes  brought 


38        THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED 

him  out  of  it  with  surprising  swift- 
ness ;  and  after  less  than  a  half-dozen 
such  encounters  Rob  and  Will  were 
peacefully  walking  home  together, 
and  Will  was  offering  to  lend  Rob 
his  books  and  help  him  in  his  am- 
bitions. "I'd  rather  have  an  educa- 
tion than  any  girl  that  goes,"  said 
Rob,  in  one  of  his  confidences.  And 
when  Will  got  out  his  old  lesson- 
books  and  prepared  to  give  Rob  his 
tutoring,  he  felt  that  he  had  paid  a 
price  for  Josephine,  and  she  be- 
longed to  him  by  right. 

Not  so  felt  Josephine.  The  air  of 
assumption  worn  by  Master  Will  was 
not  at  all  to  her  mind.  And  if  Will 
had  found  it  difficult  to  win  a  smile 
before,  he  now  found  it  impossible. 
She  was  like  a  little  wild  brier  rose, 
full  of  color  and  bloom  and  perfume 
and  honey,  but  the  sweetbrier  grew 
far  up  the  face  of  a  cliff,  and  was 
full  of  thorns,  moreover.  Should  he 
make  some  breathless  endeavor,  per- 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED        39 

haps  he  might  clutch  the  rose,  per- 
haps the  thorn.  Ah,  indeed,  it  was 
the  thorn !  And  Will  returned  to  his 
medical  professors  in  a  condition  by 
no  means  favorable  to  his  studies. 

But,  for  all  that,  Will  Marley  was 
not  the  one,  as  Rob  said,  to  go  back 
on  a  promise;  and  he  sent  Rob 
Campbell  all  the  books  needed,  and 
wrote  him  pages  of  instruction,  be- 
sides, in  a  letter  sent  twice  a  week, 
half-maddened  by  Rob's  matter-of- 
fact  replies,  in  which  not  the  most 
eager  scrutiny  could  find  a  word  or 
a  thought  of  Josephine — Rob  simply 
lost  now  in  the  dust-cloud  of  his 
education. 

Yet,  as  all  good  actions  have  their 
reward,  in  one  shape  or  in  another  if 
not  in  that  expected,  so  Will's  faith- 
fulness to  Rob  bore  very  unlooked- 
for  fruit.  For,  studying  early  in  the 
morning,  at  odd  moments  behind  the 
desk  or  the  counter,  and  as  long  as 
the  kerosene  lamp  held  out  to  burn 


4O        THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 

at  night,  Rob  had  no  time  to  devote 
to  pleasure,  and  Miss  Josephine 
found  herself,  for  all  her  pretty  face 
and  charming  ways,  apparently  quite 
set  aside.  For  Rob  constituted 
himself  the  watch-dog  of  Will's 
interests,  and  it  having  been  under- 
stood long  ago  by  other  admiring 
youths  that,  so  far  as  this  little  maid 
was  concerned,  she  was  a  garden 
enclosed,  few  ventured  to  encroach 
on  what  they  thought  Rob's  privi- 
leges; and  the  moment  that  one  more 
daring  than  the  rest  did  so,  ever  so  lit- 
tle, the  watch-dog  showed  his  teeth, 
and  the  trespasser  retired,  and  Miss 
Josephine  was  left  alone,  since  Rob 
did  not  presume  upon  his  alleged 
privileges — and  very  dreary  she 
found  it.  It  was  vain  for  her  to  put 
on  the  rosy  head-gear  that  she  had 
knit  herself  to  go  to  lecture  in — no 
one  joined  her  on  the  way ;  to  sing 
her  sweetest  in  the  choir — no  one 
waited  for  her  at  the  door — no  one 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED        41 

but  Rob,  who  stalked  along  silently 
beside  her,  or  else  talked  of  sines  and 
cosines,  principalities  and  powers, 
till  she  felt  she  was  a  fool.  She  saw 
from  the  window  the  parties  go 
sleighing  when  the  moon  was  high, 
for  the  dance  and  the  supper  at  the 
head  of  the  lake;  but  no  one  had 
asked  her  to  go.  She  had  to  drop 
the  village  sociables,  for  Rob  had  no 
time  for  them,  and  there  would  be 
no  one  to  come  home  with  her.  And 
she  began  to  get  melancholy  and 
moping,  to  feel  her  school  an  oppres- 
sion, the  children  a  vexation,  and  to 
find  the  days  long  and  dismal,  with 
no  sort  of  pleasure  in  them  to  look 
forward  to,  except  now  and  then  a 
magazine,  a  book,  a  photograph  of 
something,  that  Will  sent  by  post. 
And  then  Agnes  and  Ellie  were  so 
afraid  that  Josephine  was  going  to 
-die — she  was  so  still,  so  different 
from  the  laughing,  dancing  Jose- 
phine that  had  been  the  joy  of  the 


42          THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

house — that  they  watched  her  with  a 
tearful  anxiety  that  made  her  feel  as 
if  she  should  have  to  go  outdoors 
and  scream. 

And  one  day  Will  came  home  on  a 
week's  vacation.  And  he  drove  to 
the  door  in  a  sleigh,  and  asked  her, 
rather  casually,  to  be  sure,  if  she 
would  like  to  go  over  the  hill,  as  he 
had  an  errand  there.  It  was  the 
half -holiday;  and  the  air  was  clear, 
the  sun  bright,  the  snow  crisp,  the 
sky  a  dazzle  of  blue;  and  she  was 
at  first  a  little  high  and  mighty,  and 
then  a  little  resentful,  and  then  a 
little  relenting,  and  then  too  greatly 
tempted  —  all  in  a  moment  —  and 
then  she  was  tucked  up  in  the  sleigh 
and  spinning  along  with  a  color  in 
her  cheek  and  a  light  in  her  eye  and 
a  laugh  on  her  lip  that  made  it  evi- 
dent to  the  rest  of  the  world  that 
Will  Marley  had  won  the  prize — to- 
the  rest  of  the  world,  that  is,  except 
Will  Marley. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         43 

But  faint  heart  never  won  fair  lady. 
And  after  this  Will  Marley  again  put 
on  a  bold  front  and  asked  her  to  go 
to  the  lecture  with  him.  And  how 
delightful  that  walk  was  to  him; 
and  how  he  longed  to  know  if  it  were 
a  twentieth  part  as  pleasant  to  her, 
or  if  it  only  meant  to  her  that  she 
was  not  left  out  while  all  the  other 
girls  were  taken !  But  although  that 
may  really  have  had  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  Josephine's  pleasure,  yet  she 
felt  so  genial  that  she  even  asked 
him  to  come  in  when  he  brought  her 
home.  The  little  girls  were  making 
candy,  and  clamoring  for  Josephine 
to  help  them  pull  it;  and  a  merry 
hour  it  was  before  Mrs.  Grey  took 
them  off  to  bed,  and  left  him  alone 
with  Josephine,  a  great  joy  and  a 
great  hesitation  battling  in  his  heart, 
and  reducing  him  to  sudden  silence 
and  early  departure.  He  went 
home  from  church  with  her  when 
Sunday  came;  and  he  called  on 


44        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Monday  morning,  before  she  went 
to  school,  to  bring  her  a  paper  novel 
he  had  spoken  of,  and  strolled  along 
with  her,  to  the  great  and  mysterious 
satisfaction  of  the  school-children, 
who  kept  her  cheeks  the  color  of 
carnations  all  the  forenoon.  And 
when  school  was  over  on  Tuesday  he 
asked  her  for  a  walk  just  as  the  late 
day  was  reddening  the  snow.  And 
Wednesday  afternoon  he  brought 
round  a  little  pair  of  skates,  and  as 
they  went  slipping  along  the  crystal 
floor  of  the  lake,  hand  in  hand,  far 
into  the  sunset,  there  seemed  to  be 
a  meaning  in  life  for  Josephine 
that  she  had  never  seen  before. 
And  on  Saturday  there  was  another 
sleighing  party  up  the  lake  in  the 
big  swan-boat  sleigh.  Will  men- 
tioned their  going  as  a  matter  of 
course;  and  when  the  sleigh  with 
its  great  horses  came  round,  Will 
was  driving  it  in  as  masterful  a  way 
as  he  did  everything  else;  and  he 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         45 

swung  Josephine  up  beside  him,  and 
if  she  herself  drove  now  and  then  a 
mile  or  two,  with  laughing  enjoy- 
ment, no  one  else  knew  it;  and  when 
they  reached  the  place  none  of  all  the 
girls  looked  so  distractingly  lovely 
as  Josephine  did  in  her  white  wool 
dress  with  its  multitude  of  pink 
ribbons,  no  one  danced  so  lightly,  so 
blithely,  so  full  of  an  unconscious 
interior  joy,  with  the  burning  tint  on 
her  cheek,  the  burning  light  in  her 
eye;  and  no  one  showed  such  a 
radiant  sort  of  life  as  Will,  silent, 
watchful,  but  now  and  again  clasp- 
ing Josephine  in  the  dance  as  if  he 
would  never  let  her  go. 

It  was  no  matter  how  much  the 
others  surrounded  and  crowded 
them  by-and-by  in  the  big  sleigh, 
starting  for  home  after  the  moon  had 
gone  down.  Will  had  given  up  the 
reins,  and  had  planted  Josephine  in 
the  warm  spot  directly  under  the 
shelter  of  the  high  box-seat  in  front 


46         TH  KM  AID    HE    MARRIED 

of  them ;  and  in  vain  Reuben  flour- 
ished his  long  whip  and  shouted  at 
the  horses — Josephine  never  heeded ; 
and  in  vain  Mary  Madden  held  out 
that  lantern  to  light  the  way  for 
Reuben,  that  Will  might  see  her 
slender  hand  prettily  gloved  and 
half  frozen — Will  never  knew  it. 
Close  together  there  in  the  long  side- 
seat,  with  the  others  all  around  them 
laughing,  talking,  singing,  it  was  his 
arm  about  her  that  kept  her  safe,  it 
was  his  shoulder  against  which  her 
little  head  rested,  it  was  his  hand 
that  held  hers  and  kept  it  warm. 
And  once — once  when  it  was  dark- 
est, and  all  the  rest  were  gayest — 
his  face  had  bent  to  hers,  and  the 
cold  cheeks  had  touched,  and  for  a 
swift  silent  moment  his  lips  had  met 
her  own,  and  he  felt  her  trembling, 
and  held  her  closer ;  and  then  pres- 
ently, as  if  to  keep  the  secret  to  him- 
self, he  also  began  to  sing,  rolling 
out  the  college  songs  he  knew  in  his 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         47 

strong,  rich  barytone;  and  the  music 
of  his  voice  and  of  the  tune,  and  the 
bells  and  the  horses'  feet,  all  seemed 
to  Josephine  to  be  keeping  time  to 
the  song  the  stars  sing  together. 
And  if,  when  Will  lifted  her  out  of 
the  sleigh  at  last,  and  ran  with  her 
up  to  the  door,  and  stood  an  instant 
within  the  dark  porch,  their  lips 
found  each  other  again  a  sweet  mad 
instant,  who  was  there  to  say? 

Snow  came  next  day,  after  the 
starless  night;  but  there  was  not 
snow  enough  in  heaven  to  keep 
Josephine  at  home  from  church. 
Never  had  such  music  filled  the 
little  house  of  praise  as  in  that  morn- 
ing hymn,  when  her  voice  thrilled  at 
least  one  of  her  hearers  through  and 
through.  Nothing  but  a  soul  filled 
with  effulgent  happiness  could  make 
such  melody  as  that.  Will  thought 
of  larks  and  bobolinks,  of  the  night- 
ingale and  the  mocking-bird,  of 
singing  women  and  of  angels'  songs, 


48         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

and  ended  all  by  thinking  only  of 
Josephine.  If  love  wrapped  him, 
rather  than  the  atmosphere  of  the 
place,  it  was  perhaps  the  manifesta- 
tion of  the  best  and  richest  that  as 
yet  he  knew  or  could  dream  of  in  the 
universe.  But  when  the  congrega- 
tion turned  for  the  last  hymn,  and 
again  that  sweet  voice  soared  and 
sang,  her  eyes,  lifted  from  the 
book,  met  his,  and  suddenly  the  color 
surged  up  and  dyed  her  face,  and  the 
voice  faltered  and  trembled  and 
ceased,  and  the  rest  of  the  choir  sang 
on  as  best  they  could — 

"The  dearest  idol  I  have  known, 

Whate'er  that  idol  be, 
Help  me  to  tear  it  from  Thy  throne, 
And  worship  only  Thee!" 

And  if  some  of  the  congregation 
were  inclined  to  be  scandalized,  yet 
I  think  there  was  not  one  among 
them,  such  is  human  nature  and  its 
silent  sympathy,  who  did  not  know 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         49 

that  morning  what  was  the  matter 
with  the  voice  of  little  Josephine 
Grey. 

It  was  four  years  since  the  cold 
sweetness  and  wild  heart-throb  of 
that  blissful  sleigh-ride.  Will,  who 
had  entered  college  in  advance  and 
had  studied  with  diligence,  had 
taken  his  medical  degree,  and  had 
come  to  practice  at  last,  finding  it 
hard  and  slow  work  between  the 
knowledge  of  the  young  doctor's 
youth  and  the  remarkable  general 
health  of  the  community.  He  was 
out  in  storm  or  shine,  with  long  and 
lonely  drives  at  dead  of  night,  with 
irregular  meals,  with  broken  sleep, 
with  reluctant  pay.  But  he  was  full 
of  the  sacred  zeal  of  his  profession, 
pouring  out  the  wine  of  life,  bring- 
ing healing  as  it  were  with  his 
touch,  giving  himself  lavishly,  mak- 
ing now  and  then  a  marvelous  cure, 
coming  slowly  to  be  known  among 


50         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

the  good  country-folk  as  a  worker 
of  miracles;  and  happy,  glorioiisly 
happy  in  it  all,  for  Josephine  was 
his,  and  every  day  brought  him 
nearer  the  time  when  he  should 
wear  her  as  a  seal  upon  his  arm. 

But  Josephine  herself  was  perhaps 
not  so  happy.  She  was  tired,  very 
tired — tired  of  the  routine  and 
racket  of  the  school,  that  she  had 
begun  to  keep  when  only  a  child 
herself;  tired  of  the  work  that  fell 
to  her  at  home,  too,  while  trying  to 
spare  her  mother,  with  Agnes  and 
Ellie  studying  and  eager  for  pleas- 
ure as  girls  of  twelve  and  fourteen 
sometimes  are ;  tired  of  the  pinch  of 
poverty;  tired,  it  may  be,  of  the 
long  waiting  and  suspense  of  her 
engagement.  She  loved  Will,  per- 
haps, as  ardently  as  ever — his  hearty, 
joyous  nature,  his  upright  spirit,  his 
generous  temper,  his  frank,  bright 
face,  all  his  great  warmth  and  cor- 
dial feeling — himself!  But  in  some 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED        51 

mysterious  way  nothing  seemed 
worth  while;  here  in  the  midst  of 
happiness,  and  on  the  brink  of  her 
marriage,  she  was  oppressed  with 
nameless  melancholy.  Trifles  irri- 
tated her ;  tears  came  at  a  word. 

"In  fact,"  said  Will,  when  various 
potions  proved  of  no  avail,  "the  dear 
nerves  need  rest.  You  must  have  a 
change." 

"How  am  I  to  have  a  change?"  she 
answered,  peevishly. 

"You  must!"  said  Will.  "Great 
heavens!"  starting  to  his  feet  and 
walking  up  and  down  the  room,  and 
rumpling  his  hair  to  fresh  brightness 
with  every  turn.  "What  makes  the 
people  here  so  healthy?  Does  every 
doctor  have  to  wait  so  long  for  pay- 
ing patients?  To  think  that  I,  whose 
business  is  to  heal  the  sick,  should 
be  eager  for  sickness  to  come !  Oh, 
I'm  not,  I'm  not!  But—" 

"I  don't  know  what  patients  have 
to  do  with  my  having  a  change," 


52         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

she  said,  hanging  listlessly  over  the 
arm  of  the  sofa. 

"At  least  it  could  be  a  change  then 
from  one  house  to  another.  And  I 
could  send  you  South,  if  I  couldn't 
go  with  you — " 

"As  if —as  if  I  would  go!  Oh,  I 
mean — I  never  supposed  you  would 
be  willing  to  have  me  go  away  from 
you!"  the  tears  spurting. 

"Josephine!  My  darling!  Only  to 
make  you  well  and  strong,  that  we 
may  be  together  always!  I  have 
enough  now  for  some  such  journey  if 
you  will  only  take  it  and  use  it  so, 
my  little  dear — " 

' '  The  money  you've  saved  towards 
our  furnishing!  Oh,  I  don't  believe 
you  care  for  me  at  all !  You  are  worn 
out  with  me!  I — oh — "  And  all 
Will  could  do  was  to  take  the 
unreasoning  little  thing  in  his  arms, 
and  hold  her  close,  and  pity  and 
love  her  with  all  his  might. 

"You  dear  Will!"  she  said  then, 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         53 

when  the  sharp  nerves  were  sheathed 
again.  "If  yon  were  always  here, 
always  holding  me  so,  I  should  not 
be  so  wicked!" 

"It  is  that  abominable  school!" 
said  Will.  "It  would  wear  a  stone 
image  to  a  pebble.  It  must  be  given 
up!" 

And  things  were  at  this  pass,  when 
Mrs.  Applegate  made  her  sister  the 
morning  visit  which  has  been 
mentioned,  returning  by  the  after- 
noon train,  and  although  a  little  late 
for  dinner,  and  finding  Mr.  Apple- 
gate  somewhat  indignant  over  her 
delay,  coming  in  so  bright  and 
cheery,  with  regrets  that  she  had 
lingered — but  when  you  were  with 
pleasant  people  you  sometimes  for- 
got how  time  was  passing,  even 
when  pleasanter  people  were  waiting 
for  you  at  home — going  upstairs 
before  he  could  retort,  making  her- 
self ready  in  a  twinkling,  and  coming 
down  handsome  and  unruffled,  and 


54        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

with  a  spicy  anecdote  about  the  For- 
rester's last  affair,  that  she  had  kept 
for  a  bonne  bouche  at  some  bitter 
moment,  that  she  caused  him  quite 
to  forget  that  he  had  been  out  of 
sorts,  or  to  ask  her  where  she 
had  been  calling,  especially  as  the 
sherry  was  just  cold  enough,  and 
there  was  plenty  of  green  fat  in  the 
soup. 

But  fate  and  fortune  always  favor 
the  bold;  and  so  Mrs.  Applegate 
found  when,  the  next  morning  in  the 
breakfast-room,  her  husband  asked 
her  to  write  a  note  for  him,  the 
gout  having  disabled  his  fingers  that 
day  sufficiently  to  make  the  use  of 
them  more  than  commonly  uncom- 
fortable. 

Now  Mrs.  Applegate 's  handwriting 
had  not  been  a  strong  point  in  the 
early  years,  and  she  had  been  wise 
enough  to  know  it.  But  she  had 
locked  herself  up  in  her  room  with 
pen  and  paper,  and  had  written 


THE    MAID    HE    M  A  R  R  I  K  D         55 

laborious  copies .  day  after  day ;  she 
had  written  out,  moreover,  whole 
romances  of  high  life  from  the  print, 
and  the  Polite  Letter-Writer's  Man- 
ual into  the  bargain.  She  had  at- 
tained, however,  only  a  large, 
scratchy  script,  whose  haste  and 
boldness  disguised  its  want  of  early 
culture  and  grace.  But  she  wrote 
the  desired  note  for  Mr.  Applegate 
with  great  ease  and  pleasantness,  of 
course. 

"What  an  infernal  hand  you 
women  of  fashion  do  write!"  he 
growled  as  he  looked  it  over.  "Two 
words  to  a  line,  and  a  page  and  a 
half  to  a  paragraph ! ' ' 

"I  know  it,"  she  said,  sweetly. 
"But  if  I  employed  a  secretary  to 
write  my  notes,  as  Mrs.  Devonshire 
and  Mrs.  Longwood  do,  I  should  be 
more  expense  to  you  than  I  am 
now." 

"A  secretary,  indeed!"  he  ex- 
claimed, tossing  her  the  note  to  seal. 


56         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"I  wonder  what  you'll  be  setting  up 
next?" 

"Oh,  I've  no  idea  of  it.  Unless 
— unless,  that  is,  you  go  to  work 
again  on  that  genealogical  story  of 
your  family ;  and  then — why,  then  I 
might  have  to  do  so.  Although  really 
I  should  like  to  have  a  hand  myself  in 
that  story  of  the  Applegates.  There 
is  no  family  with  so  much  romance 
in  it,  with  such  fine  Colonial  hap- 
penings. But  my  own  fingers  are  so 
stiff  some  days  that  I  don't  believe 
I  could  keep  pace  with  your  rapid 
dictation,"  she  said,  opening  and 
closing  her  plump  white  hand  with  a 
shower  of  sparkles.  "I  know  I 
couldn't." 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Applegate,  as  he 
picked  up  his  morning  paper  again, 
after  a  glance  at  the  portrait  of  a 
dignitary  of  the  old  Province  days 
upon  the  wall "  I  am  going  on  with  it. ' ' 

"I  do  hope  you  will." 

"It  has  to   be  done,"  he  said,  a 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         57 

little  pompously.  "And  there  is  no 
one  else  to  do  it.  Frances  never 
will.  Laura  never  can — " 

"Then,"  said  Mrs.  Applegate,  "I 
will  tell  you  what  we  might  do.  I 
have  a  little  niece,  a  little  rose-bud — 
well,  I  can't  say  what  I  think  of  her, 
for  she  is  the  very  image  of  what  I 
was  at  her  age — ' ' 

"A  niece?" 

"Yes.  I  have  never  troubled  you 
much,  you  know — I  have  never 
troubled  you  at  all  —  about  my 
family — " 

"I  didn't  know  you  had  a  family!" 
exclaimed  the  courtly  gentleman. 

"Yes.  Quite  as  good  a  family  as 
the  Applegates,"  she  replied,  se- 
renely. "Such  of  the  Applegates 
as  I  have  seen,"  she  added.  "They 
have  not  much  money — " 

"A  not  unusual  circumstance." 

"But  what  they  have  answers  their 
needs.  This  little  damsel  has  kept  a 
school — the  pretty  baby!  And  she 


58         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

writes  a  very  plain  and  agreeable 
hand — " 

"Oh,  I  see!  And  you  propose  to 
bring  her  down  here?" 

"Why,  if  we  need  a  secretary,  and 
can  get  one  for  nothing — " 

"I  don't  know  about  the  'nothing.' 
High-toned  articles  always  fetch 
their  price.  What  sort  is  she?  Fit 
to  associate  with  my  daughters?" 

"She  is  fit  to  associate  with  your 
wife,"  said  Mrs.  Applegate,  with 
gentle  dignity. 

"By  Jove,  you're  a  stunner!"  said 
her  husband,  in  a  glow  of  apprecia- 
tion. He  had  always  had  an  amused 
pleasure  in  seeing  Mrs.  Applegate 
carry  things  with  a  high  hand.  He 
liked  sometimes  to  give  her  the 
opportunity. 

"She  is  much  prettier  than  my 
step-daughters.  Excuse  me,  dear, 
if  I  say  much  more  amiable, ' '  said 
Mrs.  Applegate,  who  had  discovered 
that  her  husband  was  sometimes 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         59 

more  easily  directed  when  she  chal- 
lenged him  than  when  she  submitted 
to  him.  "She  is  a  little  sunbeam. 
I  don't  think  I  am  prejudiced  or 
partial — " 

"Not  in  the  least." 

"I  have  not  been  with  her  enough 
of  late  years  to  be  greatly  concerned 
about  her.  I  haven't  done  quite 
right.  It  must  be  a  half-dozen 
years  since  I  have  seen  her,  till — 
lately.  But  I  can  assure  you  she 
would  be  an  ornament  to  your  house, 
and  bring  life  and  youth  and  health 
into  it.  And  it  would  not  be  a  bit  of 
a  bad  thing  for  either  of  us  if  she 
came  for  a  little  stay. ' ' 

"Do  you  want  her?" 

"Why,  yes,  I  think  so." 

"Humph!  Who  is  going  to  dress 
her?" 

"Who  has  always  dressed  her?" 
said  Mrs.  Applegate,  with  a  glance  of 
indignation.  "She  will  have  clothes 
enough. ' ' 


60        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Well,  7  shan't  pay  for  them. 
Mark  that.  But  I'd  just  as  lief  she 
came  for  a  season  or  so.  A  pretty 
girl's  a  pleasant  thing  to  have  round. 
And  if  she's  a  success,  she'll  bring 
some  fresh  life  into  the  house,  as  you 
say.  And  if  it  doesn't  work,  she 
needn't  stay." 

"If  you  remember,"  said  Mrs. 
Applegate,  with  a  slight  flush  on  the 
still  rare  moulding  of  a  dimpled 
cheek,  "the  insinuations  made  to  you 
by  Frances,  concerning  marrying  a 
cook — ' ' 

"Pshaw!  pshaw!  You've  much 
too  long  a  memory.  That  was  in  her 
first  raptures. ' ' 

"Then  I  should  like  to  have  her 
see  my  pretty  Josephine,  with  the 
refinement  of  a  flower  in  every 
line — " 

"And  you'll  try  your  fist  at  bring- 
ing out  a  beauty!  By  Jove,  I'd  like 
to  see  you !  You  can  do  it !  You  can 
do  it!"  he  chuckled.  And  the  fancy 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         6  I 

so  pleased  him  that  he  had  to  lay 
down  his  newspaper  and  gaze  at  her 
a  moment  and  have  another  laugh. 
"Well,  perhaps  I  will  pay  for  them," 
he  said. 


Ill 

As  Mrs.  Applegate  was  human, 
she  would  have  liked  at  that  moment 
to  take  off  the  rings  he  had  given 
her  and  throw  them  at  him,  or  to  do 
some  other  violent  thing  showing  him 
she  did  not  care  for  his  money. 

But  she  did  care  for  his  money. 
And  there  was  Josephine — for  yester- 
day's touch  of  mother  earth  had 
given  her  family  feeling  fresh 
strength.  And  after  all  he  was 
kind,  in  some  ways  he  was  fine,  he 
was  handsome,  she  was  fond  of  him ; 
and  her  swift  anger  subsided.  He 
was  still  looking  at  her  and  smiling, 
for  with  all  his  grumbling  the  fact 
remained  that  he  admired  her,  ad- 
mired her  good-nature  and  natural 
grace,  her  tact  and  talent;  the  way 
she  surmounted  obstacles,  carried 
63 


64        THEM  AID    HE    MARRIED 

herself,  carried  all  before  her  when 
need  was,  justified  him,  too.  And  she 
made  him  very  comfortable.  On  the 
whole,  the  day  he  married  her  was 
a  day  to  be  marked  with  a  white 
stone,  he  felt.  And  if  now  and  then 
her  pretensions  gave  him  amuse- 
ment, he  enjoyed  the  amusement; 
but  otherwise  he  was  loyal  to  her  and 
let  no  one  else  know  it,  enjoying  it 
all  the  more  that  he  had  to  enjoy  it 
by  himself.  "You  are  a  trump, 
Mrs.  Applegate!"  said  he.  "You're 
a  trump !  You  know  how  to  make  a 
man  young  again!  It's  a  pleasure  to 
have  you  round!"  And  then  Mrs. 
Applegate  stepped  across  the  rug 
and  bent  and  kissed  him;  and  he 
really  considered  that  he  had  done  a 
good  thing  for  her,  and  had  done  it 
graciously,  and  had  won  her  grati- 
tude. And  he  went  down  to  his  club 
with  a  warmth  at  his  heart  that  made 
him  whirl  his  cane  and  step  out 
briskljT,  notwithstanding  his  gouty 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED        65 

foot,  and  made  the  Chauncey- 
Bedfords,  who  happened  to  drive  by, 
remark,  after  their  smiling  nods 
and  his  lifted  hat,  that  really  it 
would  be  a  long  day  before  Frances 
Boylston  and  her  sister  divided  those 
millions  they  were  waiting  for. 
"His  wife  certainly  makes  him  very 
content.  By-the-way,  has  one  ever 
discovered  where  she  came  from?" 
"My  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Chauncey- 
Bedford  to  her  young  daughter-in- 
law,  "I  know  her  very  well,  and 
have  the  highest  regard  for  her.  I 
often  use  her  horses  when  ours  are 
lame.  Frank  Applegate  told  me 
himself  that  she  belonged  to  one  of 
the  oldest  families  in  the  country. 
They  lost  a  great  deal  of  money 
when  the  turnpikes  were  thrown 
open.  But  any  one  can  see  that 
she  is  a  gentlewoman.  She  has 
some  old  diamonds  set  in  silver — a 
brooch  surmounted  by  a  coronet — I 
think  she  said  something  about  her 


66        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

mother  once  when  I  admired  it. ' '  If 
Mrs.  Applegate  had  heard  her,  so 
effusive  would  have  been  her  satisfac- 
tion that  she  would  gladly  have  given 
her  the  diamonds,  but  for  that  con- 
jured apparition  of  her  mother  in 
the  place  of  the  old  pawnbroker 
of  Prague  of  whom  she  bought 
them. 

And  so  that  very  day  came  the 
letter  that  made  a  fluttering  in  the 
dove-cote  of  the  Greys,  asking  Jose- 
phine to  spend  the  winter  with  her 
aunt,  and  telling  her  to  come  at  once 
and  come  as  she  was,  and  her  aunt 
would  see  to  her  wardrobe  after- 
wards. And  Mrs.  Grey  said  she 
didn't  know  how  she  could  spare 
her;  but  Will  said  go  she  must,  and 
Agnes  could  take  her  school — she 
was  older  now  than  Josephine  was 
when  she  first  took  it.  And  then  he 
held  her  as  if  it  were  impossible  for 
him  to  open  his  arms  and  release  her, 
filled  with  the  sense  of  danger,  yet 


sure  that  what  was  best  for  her  was 
best  for  him. 

The  day  that  Mrs.  Applegate  re- 
ceived her  reply  was  Monday ;  it  was 
a  saints'  day,  too;  but  she  sacrificed 
her  feeling  in  that  direction  and 
went  out  early  to  the  bargain  sales ; 
and  a  number  of  bright  remnants  of 
China  silks  and  crapes,  of  cloth,  of 
ribbons,  came  home  later  in  the  day. 
She  contemplated  them  with  satis- 
faction, for  they  were  paid  for  from 
what  she  used  to  call  her  own  little 
scrap  of  money.  She  doubted  if  her 
gloves  would  not  be  too  large; 
but  her  foot  was  an  uncommonly 
small  one,  and  she  was  sure  that 
certain  very  pretty  high-heeled 
affairs  of  her  own  would  do  for 
Josephine  till  she  was  in  funds  again. 

Mr.  Applegate  had  had  to  go  out 
of  town  for  a  directors'  meeting  the 
day  that  Josephine  came ;  and  with  a 
dressmaker  and  two  seamstresses 
upstairs  the  next  two  days,  several 


68        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

of  Mrs.  Applegate's  gowns  were  cut 
over  and  made  up  with  new  bodices 
and  youthful  colors  and  garnishings, 
till  a  street  suit  and  a  dinner  dress 
and  an  evening  gown  were  completed 
and  others  were  planned,  the  dress- 
maker and  her  women  employed  for 
some  days  subsequently  on  further 
achievements,  and  Mr.  Applegate 
none  the  wiser  when  he  returned, 
as  lunch  was  sent  up  to  the  sewing- 
room,  and  he  was  not  down  in  the 
morning  when  they  came,  and  he 
was  dressing  for  dinner  or  was  in 
the  library  when  they  went. 

Mr.  Applegate  had  reached  home 
late,  the  train  having  been  detained ; 
he  was  chilled;  he  had  not  carried 
his  point  at  the  directors'  meeting; 
and  he  was  decidedly  cross  wrhen  he 
came  in ;  and  after  a  few  words  he 
went  to  his  room  and  summoned 
Daniel.  Mrs.  Applegate  had  sent 
him  up  a  cup  of  hot  bouillon, 
although  she  had  discreetly  with- 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED        69 

drawn  after  brief  greeting.  And  an 
hour  later,  rested  and  refreshed,  he 
opened  his  door  to  descend  to  dinner 
in  a  somewhat  less  grumpy  frame, 
and  stopped  surprised,  bewildered, 
charmed,  at  what  seemed  to  him  the 
sweetest  sound  he  had  ever  heard  in 
his  life. 

It  was  Josephine  singing — singing 
an  old  German  hymn.  He  did  not 
understand  the  words — sooth  to  say, 
the  singer  did  not  either — but  he 
knew  the  tune;  it  was  one  his 
mother  used  to  sing.  But  what  a 
flute  of  a  voice ;  how  sweet,  how  rich, 
how  fresh !  Josephine  did  not  know 
he  had  come  back ;  she  was  singing 
to  herself  and  letting  out  her  heart 
to  the  music — a  trifle  homesick, 
thinking  of  her  mother  and  the 
girls,  greatly  longing  for  Will,  a  little 
awed  by  all  this  unusual  splendor, 
somewhat  pleased  to  think  it  was 
her  aunt's,  vaguely  feeling  it  was 
too  much  like  the  fortunes  of  a 


70         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Gurtmdeel  in  the  Arabian  Nights  not 
to  be  a  dream,  and  all  the  time  lov- 
ing the  music  of  her  hymn.  She 
had  on  a  soft  gray  long-skirted  silk, 
the  waist  covered  with  a  pointed  cape 
of  Irish  lace  that  fell  over  the 
shoulder  puffs,  and  long  close  cuffs 
of  the  lace  ending  at  the  elbows; 
there  were  some  bows  of  pink  ribbon 
on  it.  Nothing  could  have  been 
simpler,  nothing  more  picturesque  in 
its  way. 

Mr.  Applegate  had  quite  forgotten 
about  Josephine;  but  he  recognized 
that  cape.  He  had  a  talent  for 
millinery.  He  remembered,  how- 
ever, in  the  same  flash  that  a  footman 
at  the  Herefords'  had  spilled  coffee 
on  the  lace  when  it  was  a  front 
breadth,  and  he  was  rather  pleased 
with  his  wife's  ingenuity  in  using  it 
now.  That  was  all  right ;  she  might 
turn  her  old  clothes  to  what  account 
she  pleased.  But  that  voice  had 
stopped  as  he  waited  between  the 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         71 

portieres  surveying  the  singer.  She 
stood  up,  the  blush  mounting  her 
face  till  it  looked  like  a  rose  indeed. 

"So  this  is  Josephine,  is  it?"  he 
said.  "Where's  your  aunt?  Why 
isn't  there  some  one —  By  Jove,  you 
don't  know  who  I  am!" 

"I  suppose,"  said  Josephine, 
timidly,  the  color  going  and  coming, 
"that  you  are — my  Uncle  Apple- 
gate." 

"That's  it!  By  Jove,  she's  charm- 
ing! Come  here  and  kiss  your  Uncle 
Applegate!" 

And  Josephine,  in  a  sudden  access 
of  gratitude  and  pleasure,  ran  for- 
ward and  put  her  arms  round  his 
neck  and  kissed  his  plump  red  cheek. 
"Oh,  how  kind  you  are  to  me!"  she 
whispered.  And  the  old  fellow 
enjoyed  the  swift,  impulsive  act  so 
much  that  he  would  have  liked  to 
ask  her  to  repeat  it,  if,  being  an 
epicure  in  his  pleasures,  he  had  not 
known  that  would  have  spoiled  it  all. 


72        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Well,"  he  said,  "my  wife  was 
right.  She  always  is.  She  said  you 
would  be  an  ornament  to  the  house. 
Has  she  taken  you  out  yet?  Seen  the 
city?  Been  to  the  State  House?" 

"Now  you  are  laughing  at  me," 
said  Josephine. 

"No,"  said  Mr.  Applegate,  plant- 
ing himself  in  front  of  the  fire,  and 
looking  at  her  where  he  kept  her 
standing  for  the  pleasure  of  the 
sight.  "I  want  to  see  if  you  are  one 
of  the  degenerate  girls  that  care  for 
balls  and  calls  and  fripperies,  and 
have  no  interest  in — " 

"Yes,"  said  Josephine,  lifting  her 
great  lucid  eyes  a  moment  and  then 
dropping  them,  the  smile  on  her 
lips  lovely  in  its  arch  audacity,  "I 
am." 

"By  Jove,  then  you  shall  have 
them !"  cried  Mr.  Applegate.  "Know 
any  of  the  college  chaps?" 

"One,"  said  Josephine.  "Rob 
Campbell." 


THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED        73 

' '  Campbell  —  Campbell  —  the  Vir- 
ginia Campbells?" 

"Oh,  no;  he  is  from  our  place;  a 
nice  fellow.  He  is  studying  hard, 
and  he  has  won  a  scholarship,  and 
we  are  all  so  proud  of  him — " 

"Oh,  he's  a  grind.  Yes.  Do  you 
know,  you're  precious  green?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  so!"  said  Jose- 
phine piteously. 

"To  think  that  sort  of  fellow  good 
as  a  dancing-man.  Of  course  you're 
out?" 

"Out?"  said  Josephine. 

"Come,  come,  not  so  green  as  all 
that !  You'll  have  to  learn  the  jargon. 
But  you're  as  good  as  a  play.  I  am 
going  to  renew  my  youth  with  you. 
Here — sit  down.  I  mean,  if  you 
please.  Not  there — opposite,  where 
.  I  can  look  at  you. ' ' 

"That  is  my  aunt's  place." 

' '  All  right.  That  little  chair,  then. 
There.  Has  any  one  ever  told  you 
that  you  are  very  pretty?" 


74        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Oh,  yes,  indeed!  I  mean — that 
is— I—" 

"That's  all  right,  too.  Always 
tell  the  truth.  There's  no  harm  in 
your  being  pretty.  No  harm  in  your 
knowing  it.  A  prince  should  always 
know  his  kingdom.  The  harm  is  in 
your  pluming  yourself,  generically 
speaking,  because  you  are  better 
looking  than  I  am — " 

"Oh,  I'm  not!"  cried  Josephine, 
before  she  thought  again.  "My 
aunt  said  you  were — very — very — 
fine  looking, "  and  she  stopped,  catch- 
ing her  breath  in  a  frightened  way. 

"And  what  do  you  say?" 

Josephine  looked  up  again  through 
the  long  lashes,  a  swift,  sparkling, 
sidelong  glance.  ' '  You  said  my  aunt 
was  always  right,  you  know. ' ' 

"That's  good!  That's  good!  Here 
she  comes.  My  dear,  I  have  been 
making  acquaintance  with  our  little 
niece.  She'll  do.  She'll  do.  We 
must  make  it  gay  for  her. ' ' 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         75 

Mrs.  Applegate  flashed  her  hus- 
band a  look  that  made  him  feel  as  if 
he  were  very  fond  of  her. 

"Does  Frances  know  she  is  here? 
Has  Laura  called?  Frances  must 
give  her  a  luncheon  at  once,  and 
Laura  a  high  tea.  I'll  speak  to 
them.  I'm  glad  I  told  Gervais  to 
come  round  to  dinner  to-night.  You 
had  better  send  out  cards  for  a 
dancing  party  in  her  honor.  Got 
everything  to  wear,  my  dear?" 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Mrs.  Applegate, 
blandly,  before  Josephine  could 
reply.  "Her  little  white  dress  is 
just  the  thing." 

"Beads  and  things?" 

"Young  girls  don't  wear  jewels, 
you  know,"  said  Mrs.  Applegate. 

"A  pearl  or  two  '11  do  her  no 
harm.  I'll  see  to  that.  She's  a 
little  flower.  And  she  sings  like  a 
bird.  Well,  you  must  take  her 
about  all  you  can;  you  won't  expect 
me  to  go  a  great  deal.  But  I'll  be 


76         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

on  guard  now  and  then.  And  she  is 
to  write  for  me  in  the  morning. ' ' 

"Oh,  may  I?"  cried  Josephine. 

"Mrs  Applegate,"  said  her  hus- 
band, "when  you  said  she  was  a  sun- 
beam you  showed  yourself  a  woman 
of  discretion.  And  I  might  know 
that  the  child  of  any  sister  of  the 
woman  I  saw  fit  to  marry  would  be 
as  much  a  treasure  as  her  aunt. ' ' 

"Oh,"  said  Josephine  to  her  aunt, 
half  under  her  breath,  "how  good  he 
is!" 

' '  He  is  a  prince  among  men ! ' '  said 
Mrs.  Applegate,  following  the  com- 
plimentary mood  of  the  moment. 
And  just  then  Mr.  Gervais  was 
announced. 

"May  I  trust  you  were  alluding  to 
me?"  said  Mr.  Gervais,  as  he  bowed 
over  the  hand  of  his  hostess.  And 
directly  afterward  the  soft-shod 
Daniel,  who  filled  many  capacities, 
murmured  to  his  mistress  that 
dinner  was  served. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         77 

You  may  be  sure  that  Josephine 
made  the  most  of  the  week  that 
followed,  in  getting  her  bearings,  as 
Mr.  Applegate  said,  with  driving, 
the  theater,  a  morning  concert,  an 
afternoon  of  receiving  calls,  and  a 
guest  or  two  at  dinner  every  day, 
where,  prepared  by  her  aunt's  hints 
on  the  days  they  had  dined  alone 
together,  there  was  no  fault  to  be 
found  with  her.  "The  little  maid  is 
under  full  sail, ' '  said  Mr.  Applegate. 
"She  has  caught  the  spirit  of  the 
thing.  Now  let  her  have  her  way. ' ' 
And  she  was  presented  to  the  world 
at  her  aunt's  dancing  party,  about  as 
dainty  an  object,  her  aunt  thought, 
as  ever  gladdened  eye,  in  her  white 
crepe,  out  of  whose  wreaths  of  white 
ostrich  feathers  rose  the  whiter 
throat  and  shoulders  and  the  head 
of  a  young  goddess — a  young  god- 
dess whose  rosy  flush,  whose 
luminous  eyes  and  dimpling  smile 
and  golden  aura  of  hair,  made  her 


78         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

seem  the  very  keeper  of  happiness. 
And  evidently  aunt  and  uncle  were 
of  one  mind  here;  for  just  as  she 
came  into  her  aunt's  sitting-room  to 
be  inspected,  Mr.  Applegate  him- 
self clasped  a  string  of  pearls  about 
her  throat,  in  what  seemed  to  his 
wife  a  freak  of  such  unprecedented 
prodigality  that  for  a  moment  she 
was  almost  apprehensive,  till,  taking 
counsel  with  herself,  she  remem- 
bered that  for  whatever  Mr.  Apple- 
gate  thought  righteous  expenditure 
he  was  always  willing  to  spend,  only 
preferring  to  spend  the  money  him- 
self. This  the  jewels  he  had  given 
her  testified,  although  Mr.  Applegate 
had  merely  felt  in  that  matter  that 
as  Frances  and  Laura  had  their 
mother's  jewels,  the  equity  of  the 
thing,  independently  of  the  splendor 
belonging  to  his  name  and  house, 
made  it  right  that  his  second  wife 
should  have  no  less.  If  he  locked 
them  all  up  in  his  safe  every  night, 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         79 

it  was  not  because  he  distrusted  their 
nominal  owner,  but  because  it  was 
his  habit,  and  it  was  best.  Now, 
when  he  had  clasped  those  pearls 
about  her  white  throat,  well  pleased 
with  himself,  in  spite  of  his  lame 
foot  Mr.  Applegate  whirled  Jose- 
phine the  length  of  the  hall,  to  the 
waltz  which  one  of  the  violinists  was 
trying  over  in  the  distance — to  see, 
he  said,  if  her  step  was  right.  "Now 
I  shall  have  a  good  clip  of  the 
gout  to  pay  for  that,"  he  cried. 
"But  it  was  worth  it!  You  little 
witch,  you  are  like  that  old  witch 
Medea — you  make  a  man  young 
again!" 

"Why  do  you  say  so  much  about 
being  young  again?"  she  asked. 
"Do  you  feel  old?  You  don't  look 
old — at  least, ' '  as  she  saw  his  look  of 
surprise,  "not  so  very  old." 

"Ah,  there  now!"  he  exclaimed. 
"To  ruin  it  all!  But  I  like  your 
truth.  And,  on  the  whole,  it  is  good 


8o        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

to  find  that  I  don't  strike  a  little 
stranger  as  so  very  old. ' ' 

"But  you're  not,  you  know!" 

"That's  right.  Keep  it  up.  Now 
for  a  turn  back!"  And  just  then 
Mrs.  Frances  Boylston  stood  at  the 
head  of  the  stairs,  dropping  her 
long  cloak,  and  looking  at  her  father 
with  eyes  of  displeased  amaze- 
ment. 

"At  your  age!"  she  said. 

"There,  Mrs.  Applegate,"  he 
cried  rather  breathlessly,  as  he 
regained  his  wife's  side,  "how  is 
that  for  an  old  man?" 

"I  don't  allow  any  one  to  call  you 
an  old  man,"  said  Mrs.  Applegate. 
"Good-evening,  Frances.  I  am  glad 
to  see  you.  I  hope  Willis  is  com- 
ing?" And  she  descended  with  her 
husband  in  stately  fashion,  Josephine 
waiting  to  go  down  with  Mrs.  Boyls- 
ton. 

"Your  father  is  so  kind  to  me!" 
she  said,  timidly.  "I  should  be 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED        8l 

very  homesick  if  he  were  not ;  it  is 
all  so  strange  here. ' ' 

"Homesick?"  said  Mrs.  Boylston, 
in  a  tone  as  cold  and  distant  as  the 
snow  on  the  top  of  the  Himalayas, 
and  quite  as  if  she  wondered  had 
the  girl  a  home  to  be  homesick  for, 
and  said  no  more,  although  she 
lingered  with  one  of  the  maids  re- 
jDairing  some  injury  to  her  lace, 
till  people  began  to  come,  whom 
Josephine  of  course  did  not  know, 
and  to  whom  she  was  talking  as  if 
Josephine  did  not  exist;  so  that  at 
last  the  little  maid  went  down  alone, 
Mrs.  Boylston,  not  daring  fully  to 
disobey  her  father's  behest  that  she 
should  receive  with  his  wife,  finally 
following,  but  paying  no  further 
attention  to  Josephine  whatever. 

But  nothing  did  Josephine  know  of 
it — the  men  surrounding  her  like 
humming-birds  round  a  blossom; 
not  even  the  girls  jealous  of  such 
radiant  loveliness,  as  girls  never  are 


82         THE    MAID    HE    M  A  R  R  I  E  1) 

when  the  loveliness  is  real,  of  such 
compelling  sweetness.  Nor  had 
the  dowagers  anything  at  all  to  say, 
for  she  spoke  to  them  artlessly,  as 
if,  although  immensely  respectable, 
they  were  her  own  age.  If  now  and 
then  she  caught  Mrs.  Boylston's  dark 
glance,  or  the  slight  scornful  sneer 
on  the  face  of  the  sister  Laura,  it 
never  occurred  to  her  that  with  all 
the  world  their  own,  in  the  way  of 
station  and  income  and  pleasure, 
they  could  be  grudging  her  the 
excitement  of  her  brief  visit,  or  have 
any  fear  of  her,  a  little  country  girl, 
or  feel  any  concern  because  she  could 
give  pleasure  to  the  father  whose 
house  they  had  left  empty. 

"Your  mother  has  done  this  very 
well,"  said  Mr.  Applegate  to  Laura, 
as  she  was  about  to  leave. 

"Your  wife  has,"  said  Mrs.  Laura, 
majestically. 

"Tush!  tush!"  said  Mr.  Apple  - 
gate.  "Your  father's  wife  is  your 


THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED        83 

mother,  to  all  intents  and  purposes. 
And  it  will  be  better  for  you  to  con- 
sider her  so.  She  would  be  a  good 
mother  if  you  two  simpletons  allowed 
her  to  be.  I  have  been  quite  as 
patient,  Laura,  as  I  intend.  You 
have  had  plenty  of  time  to  correct 
erroneous  impressions ;  and  if  there 
is  any  more  of  this  Goneril  and 
Regan  business,  you  will  hear  some- 
thing break !  Now  I  want  you  and 
Frances,  each  of  you,  to  give  this 
little  rose-bud  a  luncheon  next 
week. ' ' 

"It  is  out  of  the  question,  father! 
I—" 

"Then  it  must  be  put  in  the  ques- 
tion. Bulfinch,  I  want  your  wife  to 
give  my  little  niece  a  luncheon  early 
next  week.  A  fine  one.  She  can 
choose  her  own  day." 

And  a  luncheon  she  gave — a  pink 
luncheon — and  with  her  husband's 
wiser  eye  upon  her  preparations, 
and  her  father  on  the  alert,  it  had  to 


84        THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 

be  a  fine  one.  And  Frances  con- 
tinued the  festivity  with  another  a 
few  days  later,  making  it  a  prim- 
rose occasion;  not  entirely  without 
thought  that  primrose-color,  which 
suited  herself,  would  be  particularly 
unbecoming  to  so  fair  a  creature  as 
Josephine.  But  Josephine,  in  her 
green  cloth  and  its  seal  borders,  and 
a  great  bunch  of  yellow  primroses  in 
her  dress,  looked  as  if  primrose-color 
were  the  one  thing  she  ought  to 
have  about  her  to  set  her  beauty 
off. 

"How  becoming  this  soft  tint  is 
to  you!"  she  said  to  the  dark  and 
dour  Frances.  "You  should  always 
wear  primrose.  I  am  very  fond  of 
it,  too,"  she  went  on,  with  that  sun- 
beamy  effect  of  hers  that  ought  to 
melt  a  rock.  "I  don't  know  what 
makes  you  all  so  kind  to  me,"  she 
said.  "You  give  me  so  much  to  re- 
member when  I  go  home.  It  is  the 
great  world  I  have  read  about,  you 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         85 

see. ' '  But  it  did  not  melt  Frances. 
The  girl  was  really  too  charming ! 

But  after  the  dancing  party,  of 
course,  there  were  swarms  of  calls 
on  Mrs.  Applegate's  day;  and  Mr. 
Applegate  made  a  point  of  being  at 
home,  and  was  not  in  the  least  dis- 
satisfied to  see  how  very  well  his 
wife's  niece  acquitted  herself,  and  to 
have  it  evident  that  he  had  married 
no  adventuress  or  woman  without 
name  or  family  —  his  daughters' 
intimation  to  that  effect  now  and 
again  ringing  in  his  ears  like  a  dis- 
turbance of  the  hearing  —  but  a 
woman  whose  kindred  had  the  gentle 
graciousness  of  this  beautiful  girl. 

Mrs.  Applegate  always  made  it  a 
point,  wherever  she  went,  to  be  at 
home  in  the  late  afternoon.  It  had 
usually  been  with  some  foreign  or 
domestic  lion,  who  roared  gently. 
But  Josephine  was  sufficient  for  the 
moment ;  and  the  people  who  dropped 
in  for  a  cup  of  tea  at  that  hour  evi- 


86         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

dently  found  it  very  agreeable,  so 
many  came,  and  came  so  often,  and 
stayed  so  long.  And  when  they  were 
gone  Josephine  sang  to  her  uncle; 
and  the  only  drawback  then,  he  said, 
was  that  she  sang  so  like  a  seraph 
that  he  could  not  go  to  sleep,  and  so 
lost  his  usual  nap.  But  that  voice 
must  be  attended  to,  he  declared; 
and  he  ordered  her  to  have  a  daily 
lesson  with  the  Madame — the  Ma- 
dame, however,  who  had  trained 
many  a  noble  voice,  saying  the 
lessons  were  only  practice,  as  the 
singing-teacher  had  already  given  a 
correct  method,  and  done  all  that 
was  necessary  for  the  voice — a  voice 
it  would  have  been  a  pleasure  to 
train.  And  Josephine  did  not  an- 
nounce the  fact  that  her  teacher  was 
only  the  master  of  the  country  sing- 
ing-school, although  he  was  an 
enthusiast  who  had  made  the  tour  of 
Europe  on  foot  for  the  sake  of  the 
Baireuth  festival,  and  old  Robert 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         87 

Franz  had  written  a  song  for  him, 
and  Miss  Pearson  had  more  than 
once  remarked  upon  his  being  a 
genius. 

"It  would  be  folly  to  deny  it,  Jose- 
phine," said  Mrs.  Applegate,  before 
they  came  down  to  dinner  together 
one  day,  "you  are  going  to  be  the 
beauty  next  season.  It's  too  late  this. 
I  wish  I  had  gone  up  for  you  last 
November  instead  of  in  February. 
Mr.  Gervais  says  there  isn't  one 
among  them  that  can  keep  step  with 
you.  You  are  going  to  have  it  all 
your  own  way.  There's  something 
about  you  that  is  even  more  fetching 
than  beauty — that  air  of  not  caring, 
of  knowing  something  better  than 
this—" 

"But  I  do  care,  Aunt  Josephine. 
I  care  immensely.  If  there's  any- 
thing better  than  this — "  She 
stopped,  and  shut  her  eyes,  for 
Will's  face  floated  just  before  them. 
"I  was  dizzy,"  she  said,  smiling. 


88        THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED 

She  knew,  by  this  time,  as  well  as 
Mr.  Gervais  did,  how  enchanting 
that  smile  was. 

Mr.  Gervais  was  already  in  the 
drawing-room  when  they  came  in, 
— a  fat  little  gourmet  for  whom  a 
pretty  girl  was  an  attraction,  but  a 
very  minor  one  in  comparison  with 
a  good  dinner. 

"Pray,  will  you  tell  me,  Mr. 
Gervais,  how  you  came  here?"  said 
Mrs.  Applegate.  "I  did  not  expect 
you  before  the  game.  Weren't  you 
over  in  New  York?" 

"How  I  came  here?  It  wouldn't 
interest  you  in  the  least.  Beacon 
Street  is  the  most  commonplace  of 
highways. ' ' 

"Come,  let  us  see  if  his  gondola  is 
tied  to  a  post  out  there  on  the 
water,"  cried  Josephine.  And  on 
her  way  she  caught  a  glimpse  of 
herself  in  a  mirror,  and  paused 
before  the  lovely  reflection  of  rosy 
crape,  and  a  fluff  of  pale  ostrich 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         89 

tips,  the  damask  cheek,  the  white, 
full  throat,  the  tangle  of  gold  hair, 
the  great  starry  eyes,  the  lips,  whose 
fine  curves  melted  into  dimples  as 
they  parted  over  teeth  like  rice  pearl. 
"It  isn't  half  bad!"  she  said,  laugh- 
ing across  her  shoulder  at  Gervais 
as  she  went  down  the  room. 

"By  George!"  he  said  to  Mrs. 
Applegate.  "Was  it  a  month  ago 
that  this  little  witch  came  out  of  the 
woods?  Was  it  out  of  the  woods  she 
came?  The  town  will  never  take  the 
wild  flavor  out  of  her !  She  will  be  a 
high  stepper;  but  she  wants  a  gold 
harness. ' ' 

Mrs.  Applegate 's  smile  said  many 
things. 

"You  see,"  said  the  wise  man, 
answering  it,  "this  thing  called  love 
is  the  beginning  of  trouble.  But  to 
look  at  it  rationally  now,  a  brilliant 
and  agreeable  young  woman  at  the 
head  of  one's  house,  of  good  birth, 
perhaps,  but  without  a  penny  to  her 


90        THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED 

name,  so  that  she  shall  feel  a  sense 
of  obligation  for  all  the  luxuries  and 
enjoyments  with  which  one  has  sur- 
rounded her — " 

"That  is  your  idea  of  marriage?" 
said  Mrs.  Applegate.  "I  doubt  if 
Josephine  has  not  quite  a  different 
one!" 

Whether  Josephine  had  or  not, 
Mr.  Gervais  had  an  opportunity  of 
finding  out  presently,  as  he  joined 
her  at  the  great  window  looking  out 
at  the  bay  dark  and  dim  in  the 
twilight,  the  distant  lights  shining 
like  scattered  jewels  on  its  purple. 

"When  I  see  you  in  white,"  he 
said,  ' '  it  gives  me  the  impression  of  a 
Mabel  Morrison  rose,  when  a  Mabel 
Morrison  is  without  a  flaw.  When 
I  see  you  in  green,  it  is  something 
delicate  and  yet  pronounced,  as  a 
maidenhair  fern.  When  I  see  you 
in  bloom-color — " 

"Really,"  said  Josephine,  "you 
have  a  right  to  your  impressions. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         91 

But  I  don't  know  that  you  have  a 
right  to  impart  them  to  me. ' ' 

He  laughed. 

"I  like  them  with  some  spirit," 
said  he. 

"Certainly,  Mr.  Gervais" — began 
Josephine. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  know  all  about  it,"  he 
said,  with  a  penitential  gesture. 
"Mea  culpa.  That's  all  right. 
Shall  I  sit  down?  Who's  the  dinner 
for?  What 'she  done?" 

"Discovered  a  new  orchid,  I 
believe, "  said  Josephine,  in  a  demure 
wonder  at  his  manners,  before  doing 
what  he  would  have  called  catching 
on. 

"You  don't  say  so!  Epiphytal?" 

She  laughed. 

' '  I  knew  you  had  an  orchid  house, ' ' 
she  said.  "I  suppose,"  grown  bolder, 
"you  spend  on  it  every  year  what 
would  maintain  and  educate  a  dozen 
families  in  moderate  circumstances. ' ' 

"I  dare  say,"  he  said,  with  a  slight 


92         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

yawn.  "Tell  me  about  this  fel- 
low." 

"The  orchid  man?  Oh,  I  don't 
know  much  about  him,"  she  said, 
calmly,  still  buttoning  her  glove. 
"I  believe  this  orchid  was  found  in 
a  jungle  in  the  heart  of  the  tropics 
somewhere,  and  cost  the  lives  of  a 
troop  of  soldiers,  and  the  sanity  of 
several  others,  and  a  war  to  the 
death  between  three  or  four  wild 
tribes." 

"And  the  slavery  and  slaughter- 
ing and  eating  of  several  tender 
young  girls — " 

"Mr.  Gervais!" 

' '  Not  that  you  mean  to  say  all  this 
was  done  for  the  sake  of  getting  the 
orchid." 

"Only  the  orchid  seems  to  be  all 
that  came  of  it,"  said  Josephine. 
"Oh,  of  course,  it's  unpleasant. 
One  oughtn't  to  mention  it,"  she 
continued  with  a  manner  in  which 
she  did  not  know  herself.  "But 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED        93 

you've  only  to  look  at  the  flower  to 
see  all  the  wickedness  there  is  in  its 
red  and  yellow  flaunting. ' ' 

"It  seems  to  me  you  are  a  little 
savage  yourself." 

"I  think  you  are  very  rude  to  call 
me  a  little  savage. ' ' 

"I  mean  slightly  disaffected  as  to 
orchids  and  the  raison  d'etre  of 
dinner  parties.  You  don't  like  our 
mode  of  attack  on  life  here?" 

"Oh,  yes,  I  do;  some  of  it.  I  like 
these  houses, " — 

"Palaces  reduced  to  the  ranks,  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  people." 

"Yes,  I  like  this  one,  these  great 
suites  of  rooms,  this  ivory  finish, 
these  rugs  made  for  Indian  princes. 
I  like  the  paintings — that  Corot, 
that  Millet,  that  little  Rousseau ;  you 
see  I  have  learned — " 

"Oh,  yes;  you  caught  the  step  in 
no  time." 

"That  looks  as  though  I  had  no 
ear,  then?" 


94         THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"On  the  contrary,  you  are  all  ear. " 

"Things  one  would  rather  not  have 
said!" 

"I  mean  the  ear  of  Fine  Ear.  But 
you  were  saying  you  like  this  house?" 

"Yes — the  ample  draperies,  the 
little  room  with  the  Luca  della  Rob- 
bia  panels,  and  the  faded  Boucher 
tapestry — ' ' 

"It  isn't  faded.  It  is  fade.  The 
colors  sublimed  in  the  beginning  to 
their  highest  power  of  tender  mel- 
ancholy— " 

"I  didn't  know  you  were  a  poet, 
Mr.  Gervais. " 

"Let  me  tell  you  in  that  ear  of 
yours,  Miss  Josephine,  if  there  is 
anything  in  the  world  I  despise  it  is 
a  poet  and  his  poetry.  My  house, 
too,  is  one  of  these  palaces — " 

"Apropos  of  what?  I  don't  believe 
there's  a  Corot  in  it,"  she  inter- 
posed, a  little  startled  by  her  suc- 
cessful assumption  of  a  too  flippant 
ease. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED         95 

"Well,  no,"  he  said,  staring  at 
her.  "How  did  you  know?  But 
there  are  a  Vibert,  and  a  Zamacois, 
and  an  Escosura,  and  a  Bougereau — ' ' 

"Really,"  said  Josephine,  "when 
I  was  a  child  we  used  to  play  with 
bits  of  broken  crockery.  And  how 
proud  and  loud  and  mad  and  glad 
we  were  if  we  found  a  piece  that  had 
a  whole  flower  on  it ! " 

He  laughed.  "Different  places, 
same  manners,"  he  said.  "Play- 
things for  this  age,  and  playthings 
for  that.  But  that  plaything  came 
to  me  without  finding;  it  was  my 
father's  before  me — all  but  a  few  can- 
vases and  curios — and  is  about  com- 
plete. It — it  only  wants  a  mistress. " 

"Indeed?"  said  Miss  Josephine, 
coolly.  ' '  Something  not  hard  to  find 
in  this — ' ' 

"Something  deuced  hard  to  find 
and  exactly  suit ! ' ' 

"Strange,"  said  Josephine,  ab- 
sently, with  an  air  of  reflection,  her 


g6        THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

finger  on  her  lip.  "They  want 
beauty,  wit,  charm,  all  the  virtues, 
all  the  graces ;  in  short — ' ' 

"Perfection,"  said  Mr.  Gervais, 
gravely,  looking  at  her. 

"And  they  will  give  in  return — a 
house  full  of  curios. ' ' 

"More  than  that,"  said  Mr. 
Gervais.  "An  honorable  name,  a 
bank  account,  limitless  luxury,  the 
ransacking  of  the  world  for  pleas- 
ures— ' ' 

"And  love?"  said  Josephine. 

"By  heaven!"  he  said,  stooping 
over  her,  "you  almost  make  me 
think  so." 

But  here  Mrs.  Applegate,  gracious 
in  purple  velvet  and  old  lace,  was 
welcoming  her  guests,  and  Mr. 
Gervais  obeyed  her  slight  but  im- 
perious gesture,  and  went  forward. 

Josephine  watched  him — the  short, 
rotund  and  full-fed  shape,  with  the 
gait  which  belongs  to  such;  the 
small  bald  head ;  the  fat,  red,  rather 


THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED        97 

genial  face  as  he  turned  about ;  the 
air  of  a  little  portly  puffing  pasha 
who  could  buy  slaves,  as  he  stood 
there ;  the  air  of  a  big  gourmet  as  he 
sat  beside  her  at  the  dinner  table 
afterward,  mightily  pleased  at  the 
entremet  he  liked,  a  little  irritated 
that  the  sherry  was  not  properly 
cooled. 

"And  he  wants  perfection,"  she 
sighed  aloud. 

"Miss  Josephine,"  he  murmured, 
"you  are  perfection." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  sidelong 
gaze  under  her  white,  downcast  lids 
— he  a  little  flushed  with  his  wine, 
the  truffled  turtle's  fin  disappearing 
in  large  gobbets.  She  was  angry 
with  herself  for  her  familiarity,  her 
impertinence.  This,  then,  was  what 
the  possession  of  one  of  the  great 
fortunes,  of  one  of  the  old  names, 
of  one  of  the  fine  houses,  one  of 
the  summer  palaces  by  the  sea,  of 
a  stable  full  of  racers,  of  the  most 


98         THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 

and  best  there  was  in  the  new  life 
that  had  seemed  so  rich  and  inex- 
haustible to  her,  made  them !  And 
then  as  if  an  electric  spark  had 
touched  her,  another  face  filled  her 
vision  for  a  moment,  as  once  before 
it  had  done,  in  place  of  this  puffed, 
rubose  countenance,  with  its  only 
half-veiled  grossett,  dark,  pale, 
starry,  the  face  of  one  who  had  a 
soul ;  and  a  song  that  she  had  heard 
Will  sing-  seemed  to  be  sounding  in 
some  far  distance,  as  if  a  voice  called 
to  her.  She  knew  the  lights  were 
not  dim,  although  they  seemed  so. 
She  was  afraid  she  might  be  going  to 
make  a  scene.  She  leaned  back  in 
her  chair,  and  began  to  fan  herself. 
"Do  you  call  this  dining?"  said 
Mr.  Gervais.  "The  room's  too 
warm?  I  was  just  thinking  that 
your  aunt  is  the  only  person  I  know 
whose  dining-room  doesn't  heat  you 
and  make  you  lay  the  blame  on  the 
wine.  What ! ' ' — as  he  looked  at  her 


THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED        99 

now — "Are  you  ill?  Here!" — with  a 
motion  to  a  servant — "drink  this.  I 
— I  was  too  precipitate.  That's 
right.  The  color's  coming  back. 
No  one  has  observed  you, ' '  he  said, 
kindly. 

Of  course,  the  color  was  coming 
back?  What  had  she  said,  what 
had  she  done,  that  gave  him  this 
right  of  proprietorship?  No  one 
had  observed,  indeed!  What  was 
thereto  observe?  "How  do  you  like 
this  Rudesheimer?"  she  heard  him 
run  on. 

"Isn't  it  the  wine  Coleridge  speaks 
of?"  she  asked. 

"By  Jove,  I  say!  I  envy  you!"  he 
broke  forth.  "Here  you  bring  a 
fresh  palate  to  all  the  new  savors, 
the  infinitely  delicate  variations  of 
taste — absolutely  new  sensations. 
To  have  them  all  over  again  I  would 
give — well,  we  can't  live  two  lives 
in  one.  Only  I  didn't  make  the 
best  of  mine.  No  boy  does. 


IOO     THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 

Rushed  it,  and  dulled  the  sensitive- 
ness before  I  knew  enough  to  ap- 
preciate the  difference  between 
Johannisberg  and  Chianti,  except 
for  the  color.  Well  the  next  best 
thing  will  be  the  training  of  an 
untried  taste  like  yours.  I  shall  live 
my  green  and  salad  days  over  again, 
and  enjoy  them,  vicariously  to  be 
sure,  but  with  more — " 

Ah,  heavens,  what  stuff  was  this 
creature  talking?  Why  did  she  need 
to  remember  so  well  just  then  a 
moment  of  the  summer  twilight 
when  she  and  Will  sat  by  the  woody 
wayside,  and  a  late  bee  went  by,  and 
he  hushed  her  to  hear  the  sound  of 
its  wings  and  compare  it  to  that  of 
the  wasp  following — a  difference  too 
fine  for  human  music  to  note.  And 
then  he  had  wondered,  if  the  great 
ether  of  space  really  existed,  whether 
it  were  absolutely  incapable  of  sound 
as  of  heat;  and,  if  the  movements 
of  the  stars  called  out  a  rush  of 


THE  MAID  HE  MARRIED    101 

tones,  at  what  lofty  and  all  but 
infinite  distances  those  tones  be- 
came braided  into  harmony,  and  at 
what  half-way  star  one  might  hear 
the  great  song  of  Lyra  just  shining 
faintly  overhead  then  in  the  deep 
blue. 

"Well,  what  if  she  did  recall  that 
moment?"  she  asked  herself.  It  was 
the  heavy  smell  of  all  these  flowers 
bringing  back  the  odor  of  that  sweet- 
brier  vine  behind  them.  "What  of 
it?  What  higher  were  sounds  than 
tastes?  Wasn't  one  just  as  much  of 
the  body  as  the  other?"  But  she 
knew,  as  she  looked  at  the  little  man 
maundering  on  between  the  lus- 
ciousness  of  his  morsels,  whether  or 
not  one  was  of  the  body  and  one  was 
of  the  soul,  or  of  the  effort  toward  a 
soul — whether  one  was  of  the  earth 
earthy,  and  the  other  of  heaven 
heavenly. 

A  prickling  sensation,  that  Mr. 
Gervais  would  have  called  indiges- 


102      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

tion,  suddenly  set  all  her  nerves 
dancing  with  anger.  She  avenged 
herself  by  bending  and  listening 
eager-eyed  to  Mrs.  Jack  Pepperidge, 
who  across  the  table  was  sparkling 
out  in  a  diatribe  upon  the  wine  Mr. 
Gervais  preferred,  the  town  he  called 
his  sacred  city,  the  people  with  such 
an  inherited  instinct  for  migration 
that,  as  they  could  not  leave  the 
town,  they  had  taken  the  town  up 
and  set  it  down  somewhere  else,  and 
had  moved  bodily  from  a  hillside  to  a 
swamp ;  upon  the  poverty  of  imagina- 
tion, in  their  architecture,  the  shab- 
biness  of  the  very  street  they  were 
on,  the  folly  of  having  closed  a  water- 
side where  Venetian  merchant 
princes,  with  such  a  chance  to  drive 
spiles,  would  have  built  their  sepa- 
rate palaces,  set  in  blossoming 
gardens,  all  the  way  up  bay  and 
river. 

"Oh,  this  will  never  do,"  said  Mr. 
Gervais.     "I  can't  have  you  enjoy- 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED      103 

ing  this  sort  of  thing  about  the  town 
where  you're  to  live — " 

"I  don't  know  that  I'm  to  live  in 
it,"  she  said. 

He  stared  at  her  with  his  round 
eyes;  but  other  people  broke  in 
then,  and  he  could  only  say  to  her 
before  he  went  away  that  night — say 
in  a  high-handed  way:  "Is  it  the 
Hunt  Ball  to-morrow  night,  or  the 
small  and  early  german?  I  am  com- 
ing first  to  know  if  you  are  going  to 
live  in  this  town — " 

"Or  die  somewhere  else?  Does  it 
really  amount  to  that?" 

And  Josephine  knew  in  that 
moment  that,  with  Daniel's  assist- 
ance, Mr.  Gervais  would  never  find 
her  again  within  these  doors  unless 
surrounded  by  a  crowd. 

There  were  not  many  nights  of  the 
season  left  now ;  but  those  were  so 
filled  with  gayeties  that  Josephine's 
sleep  only  began  perilously  near  day- 
light. All  the  same  she  knew  why 


104      THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED 

she  was  there,  and  she  was  ready 
to  write  at  her  uncle's  dictation 
whenever  he  took  out  his  papers. 

"Come,  come,"  said  he.  "This 
won't  do.  In  bed  at  three  or  four  in 
the  morning,  or  worse,  and  out  of 
it  at  this  hour?  Where's  the  beauty- 
sleep?  We  won't  have  any  more  writ- 
ing at  present,  and  when  we  begin 
again  it  shall  be  for  the  hour  before 
lunch.  That  will  be  better  for  me, 
too.  And,  my  dear,"  to  his  wife, 
"I  am  rather  tired  of  those  little 
street  suits.  Have  another  for  her. 
Have  a  pearl  gray,  very  light  and 
dressy — ' ' 

"With  little  capes  then,  a  quantity 
of  them,  lined  with  rose  pink!"  cried 
his  delighted  wife. 

"And  edges  of  marabout,  down, 
feathers,  something  fluffy,  you  know 
what,"  said  Mr.  Applegate,  waving 
his  hands  airily.  "And  a  big  gray 
hat  with  plumes,  and  all  that,  you 
know.  Don't  mention  the  expense! 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      105 

I'll  have  our  little  girl  dressed  as 
becomes  her,  if  it  breaks  a  bank!" 

Mr.  Applegate  did  not  suspect  that 
this  sunny  thing  had,  with  the  melt- 
ing power  of  her  sweetness,  her 
happiness,  her  success,  her  com- 
panionship, broken  a  stouter  bank 
than  one  with  vaults  of  chilled  steel. 
And  when  she  burst  into  nervous 
tears  of  excitement  and  gladness, 
her  uncle  hardly  knew  when  he  had 
had  a  keener  pleasure  than  in  kissing 
off  the  salt  drops,  and  assuring  her 
that  she  was  his  own  pet,  his  pretty 
dear,  his  little  new  daughter,  wonder- 
ing then  to  hear  his  own  voice,  and 
leaving  off  in  a  startled  way. 

"Mr.  Applegate,"  said  his  wife, 
somewhat  solemnly  that  night, 
' '  when  the  Lord  made  you  he  made  a 
good  man!"  And  Mr.  Applegate 
began  to  think  so  himself. 


IV 

Mrs.  Applegate,  very  well  satisfied 
with  things  as  far  as  they  had  gone, 
took  her  prize  out  of  town  early. 
She  said  to  herself  that  Josephine  in 
the  effort  to  overcome  and  conceal 
her  shyness  was  just  a  little  fresh, 
and  that  the  experiences  of  a  short 
European  trip  might  be  useful.  It 
was  no  matter  about  mistakes  over 
there.  They  would  go  in  a  fast  boat 
with  the  Jack  Pepperidges,  who  were 
off  for  a  six  weeks'  trip,  just  to  look 
over  a  foreign  cutter.  It  would  be 
too  early  for  London,  but  they  could 
do  a  little  something  in  the  way  of 
finery  in  Paris,  acquiring  some 

savoir-faire  on  the   way.     As   Mrs. 
107 


108      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Applegate  said,  so  was  it  done.  They 
would  return  just  as  the  trial  races 
were  on  at  Newport.  There  were 
opportunities  in  the  trial  races.  Law- 
rence Berkeley,  for  instance,  who 
all  last  year  had  been  at  the  ends  of 
the  earth,  was  interested  in  one  of 
the  yachts,  and  the  perspicacious 
lady  knew  that  where  a  dot  was 
indispensable  with  the  European 
lover,  with  the  American  lover  it 
was  quite  another  affair. 

The  Neckan  lay  on  the  edge  of  the 
fleet.  They  had  just  made  colors 
aboard,  and  fired  the  sunset  gun, 
and  were  anchored  some  cable 
lengths  away  from  another  yacht  on 
either  side.  All  the  inner  harbor, 
indeed,  was  gay  with  the  lesser  craft, 
waiting  for  the  work  of  the  next 
day.  The  town  sparkled  in  the 
evening  light  behind  them,  but  the 
White  Ladye  when  she  came  in  left 
the  sea  outside  lying  high  and  dim, 
where  the  black  and  gold  line  of  the 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      1 09 

Valiant  made  relief,  and  the  outlines 
of  the  Neckan,  of  the  Powhatan,  and 
of  the  big  man-of-war  were  like 
phantoms.  Lettuce  leaves  and  fruit- 
parings  floated  by  the  little  launches 
that  were  darting  all  about  like 
caddis-flies  on  the  inside  water,  with 
the  boats  of  the  navy  yard.  There 
was  an  agreeable  sense  of  stir  and  of 
impending  dinner  in  the  air;  pres- 
ently, there  would  be  toilettes  of  a 
sort,  and  night  on  the  dark,  still 
water-world,  and  sleep  after  toil. 
The  Mayflower  crept  in  like  a  ghost 
in  the  purpling  air,  and  all  her  white 
array  slid  down  and  left  her.  And 
then  the  lights  began  to  twinkle  out, 
and,  as  if  by  signal,  the  whole  inner 
fleet  put  on  a  myriad  of  other 
twinkles  with  electric  bulbs  and  green 
and  red  sparks,  till  the  harbor  was 
a  sheet  of  jewels. 

Through  all  this  cheerful  prepara- 
tion for  pleasure,  now  sliding  along 
the  dark,  oily  swell,  and  now  break- 


110      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

ing  the  wake  of  light  of  this  and  that 
boat,  into  their  life  a  moment  and 
gone  again,  seeing  the  faces  of  the 
men  in  their  sea  ne'glige'e,  and  of  the 
women,  these  trim  in  yachting  suits 
and  those  wearing  big  flower-laden 
hats  and  gorgeous  gowns,  slipped 
the  launch  of  the  Neckan,  carrying 
various  stores  from  town,  the  mail, 
and  Mrs.  Applegate  and  her  niece, 
who  had  come  down  to  join  the  yacht 
outside. 

"Oh!"  cried  Mrs.  Applegate,  as 
they  welcomed  her  on  the  Neckan, 
"this  is  solid  comfort,"  and  she 
looked  along  the  deck  while  drawing 
off  her  gloves.  "I  declare  I  dared 
not  move  on  the  little  Minnow  for 
fear  of  upsetting  the  whole  business. 
I  assure  you  when  we  came  round 
the  Point  and  she  stood  on  end  at 
every  big  wave  and  made  a  spring 
over  into  the  next,  I  felt  of  no  more 
worth  than  a  bubble."  And  mov- 
ing easily  on  her  way  with  saluta- 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      III 

tions  to  Mr.  Applegate's  friends,  she 
disappeared  after  Josephine. 

When  they  came  on  deck  again, 
under  the  awning  with  its  fringe  of 
lights,  a  white  apparition  loomed 
some  way  off,  a  yacht  that  had  come 
to  anchor  while  they  were  at  dinner, 
"The  Pendragon, "  the  sailing- 
master  said  in  answer  to  Mr.  Ap- 
plegate's inquiry,  "Mr.  Lawrence 
Berkeley's  Pendragon." 

Mr.  Lawrence  Berkeley  was  at 
that  moment  leaning  on  the  rail  of 
the  Pendragon,  nothing  of  him 
visible  but  the  spark  of  his  cigar, 
and  looking  down  and  across  at  the 
Neckan.  "By  Jove,  Gervais!"  he 
exclaimed,  "do  you  see  that?"  and 
the  movement  of  his  cigar  indicated 
the  lighted  deck  of  the  Neckan  and 
the  beautiful  girl  standing  there 
while  some  one  dropped  a  wrap  over 
her  shoulders.  She  wore  a  white 
Venetian  silk,  which  she  had  brought 
along,  in  case  they  dressed  for 


112      THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 

dinner,  because  it  would  not  cockle 
in  the  sea-air,  and  she  had  a  bunch 
of  green  leaves  on  her  breast. 

"Do  I  see  what?"  said  Mr.  Gervais, 
lighting  another  cigar  before  he 
threw  away  the  last  and  watched  its 
little  spark  hiss  and  quench  in  the 
water. 

"That!" 

"That,"  said  Mr.  Gervais  pres- 
ently, "is  a  demonstrative  dangerous 
pronoun,  relating  in  this  case  to  Miss 
Josephine  Grey,  the  ingenue"  of  last 
season,  the  toast  of  the  next,  and 
Mrs.  Applegate's  great  card.  If  you 
know  what's  good  for  you,  you'll  put 
on  steam  and  be  out  of  this  by  day- 
break. ' ' 

"Run  away  from  danger,  eh?" 

"Gad,  there's  some  dangers  a  man 
had  best  pass  by  on  the  other  side." 

"I  don't  know  but  you're  right. 
Circe  turned  her  men  to  beasts. 
This  damsel  seems  to  sour  the  milk 
of  human  kindness.  Come,  it's 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      113 

rather  interesting.  There's  a  pleas- 
ure in  deserving  victory  if  you  don't 
get  it, ' '  said  Mr.  Lawrence  Berkeley 
lightly.  "Worthy  antagonist,  don't 
you  know;  a  shiver  of  danger,  a 
trembling  on  the  edge  of  triumph. 
I'm  feeling  fairly  fit.  Suppose  we 
are  set  over  there  to-morrow. ' '  And 
he  looked  again  for  the  girl  in 
the  light  with  the  green  leaves 
on  her  breast.  But  she  was  lying 
back  in  her  chair  near  the  side, 
almost  out  of  sight,  and  letting  the 
cool  air  blow  over  her.  Perhaps  in 
the  gloom  his  fancy  magnified  the 
beauty  he  had  seen,  and  as  he  leaned 
toward  it  he  could  not  tell  whether 
he  saw  or  dreamed  its  loveliness. 

The  great  Sound  Steamer  went 
puffing  and  panting  by  with  emerald 
and  ruby  glints,  laying  golden  organ- 
pipes  down  the  dark  waters,  a  mov- 
ing pavilion  of  light.  The  yachts 
rose  and  fell  in  the  slow  swell  of  the 
slipping  tide ;  the  stars  looked  faintly 


114     THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED 

out  behind  a  veil  of  haze ;  now  and 
then  through  the  wide  spaces  long 
wafts  of  the  perfume  of  flowers 
streamed  past  by  way  of  the  land, 
now  and  then  by  way  of  the  sea  came 
a  strong  fanning  of  its  chill  salt 
breath.  From  a  distant  deck  a 
woman's  voice  rose  and  filled  the 
dark  hollow  of  the  heaven  with  the 
sparkling  deliciousness  of  Manon's 
drinking  song.  In  the  following 
silence  only  the  chimes  of  the  clocks 
from  far-off  towers  fell,  and  the  bells 
of  this  ship  and  of  that  sounded  the 
hour;  and  there  seemed  to  be  in  all 
the  atmosphere  of  the  summer  night 
and  sea  a  certain  waiting  and 
expectancy  of  pleasure  if  not  of  joy. 
As  for  Mrs.  Applegate,  she  knew 
that  when  Josephine  stood  up  in  the 
glow  of  the  electric  lights,  with  her 
white  gown  and  her  green  leaves, 
while  the  wrap  was  dropped  on  her 
shoulders,  the  fleet  was  not  so  widely 
scattered  that  she  was  not  the  center 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      115 

of  many  eyes,  with  or  without  a 
glass,  in  that  circumambient  dark- 
ness. It  gave  her  a  thrill  of  the  joy 
that  she  felt  ought  to  have  belonged 
to  her  own  youth.  She  liked  it  all 
the  better  that  Josephine  was  utterly 
unconscious.  And  she  was  not  at 
all  surprised  when  at  an  early  hour 
next  morning  Mr.  Lawrence  Berke- 
ley and  Mr.  Gervais  and  some  others 
presented  themselves  both  to  pay 
their  compliments  and  to  make 
arrangements  for  seeing  the  day's 
race  to  better  advantage  than  on 
board  the  big  Pendragon. 

Breakfast  was  still  on;  and  the 
young  men  did  not  seem  to  be 
unkindly  disposed  to  a  little  com- 
pound of  cracked  ice  and  something 
else,  that  was  brought  them;  and 
they  were  already  quite  well  ac- 
quainted with  the  wife  of  Jack  Pep- 
peridge,  whose  boat  was  to  follow 
the  race,  and  who  had  come  back 
on  the  steamer  with  Mrs.  Applegate 


Il6      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

and  Josephine — when  Josephine  ap- 
peared, clad  in  a  close-fitting  white 
water-proof  stuff,  little  rings  loosed 
from  her  hair  that  was  bound  away 
in  braids  beneath  the  visored  cap; 
and  no  one  looked  at  any  one  else. 

"We  were  all  saying,"  said  Mrs. 
Applegate,  "that  this  is  perfect 
madness. " 

"Perfect  sport!"  said  Mrs.  Pepper- 
idge. 

"Perhaps  it  is  a  little  rash,"  said 
Josephine.  "But  I  find  I  am  a  sea- 
bird,  and  one  may  never  have  an- 
other chance  at  such  a  delightful 
madness." 

"We  are  just  two  of  the  crew," 
said  Mrs.  Pepperidge.  "Obey  orders, 
and  be  animated  'ballast.  I  always 
go  with  Jack,  you  know ;  and  he  has 
let  me  fetch  Josephine  for  a  mascot," 
the  intimacy  of  the  sea-voyage  still 
lingering. 

' '  I  shall  make  him  a  flag  with  my 
own  hands,"  said  Josephine. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      Il"J 

"Fortunate  fellow,"  said  Law- 
rence Berkeley  with  some  audacity. 
And  as  Josephine  looked  at  him  she 
saw  one  of  those  men,  tall,  sun- 
burnt, with  the  dark  eye  now  having 
the  glint  of  mockery  and  now  the 
melancholy  droop  that  belong  in  the 
young  girl's  fancy  to  Hamlet,  to 
Hassan,  to  Lucifer. 

"I  only  wish  Jack  had  built  a 
boat  as  he  first  intended, ' '  said  Mrs. 
Pepperidge.  "But,  as  it  is,  I  sup- 
pose we  are  not  in  it  on  the  Flying 
Scud,  although  Jack  says  we  are. 
He  takes  odds  we  shan't  be  far 
away.  You're  racing,  Mr.  Berke- 
ley?" 

"I  could  wish  I  were  to-day,"  he 
said. 

The  lady  looked  at  him  a  moment. 
'  Able  seaman?"  she  asked.  He 
nodded.  "Come  on  then.  I'll  make 
it  right  with  Jack.  We'll  send  a 
hand  ashore.  But  you  know  what  it 
is?  Under  water  half  the  time — 


Il8     THE    MAID    HE     MARRIED 

rather     nerve -bracing.       Josephine 
hasn't  any  nerves." 

And  rather  wondering  about  the 
nerves,  Mr.  Berkeley  went  for  his 
wet  weather  rig  and  found  himself 
before  long  on  his  way  to  the  Flying 
Scud,  where  she  hung,  dipping  her 
pretty  nose  in  the  water,  impatient 
as  a  tethered  wild  creature,  with  the 
wind  blowing,  the  water  curling,  and 
all  the  fleet  of  sails  spreading,  chang- 
ing, skimming  and  maneuvering, 
and  all  the  steam  yachts  purring  and 
signaling  and  shrieking,  and  the 
three  towering  white  beauties  get- 
ting into  line  as  they  could  for  the 
hindering  boats,  only  one  crossing 
the  line  on  the  second,  off  at  the  gun- 
shot like  three  arrows  from  the  bow, 
past  the  Reef  and  out  to  open  sea. 
In  a  moment  or  two  the  Flying  Scud 
was  swelling  out  her  linen  and  after 
them ;  and  not  all  the  interest  of  the 
fleet,  by  any  means,  centered  on  the 
three  other  racers. 


THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED      II(J 

"I  have  shipped  as  able  seaman, 
Pepperidge,"  said  Mr.  Berkeley. 
' '  And  as  such  you  must  command  me. " 

"I  think  you'll  earn  your  passage," 
said  Mr.  Pepperidge.  "It's  going  to 
be  a  wet  trip.  But  if  the  Flying  Scud 
doesn't  show  them  all  a  clean  pair  of 
heels  she'll  be  in  close  alongside  the 
winner.  There's  some  money  up. 
Of  course,  you  know,  we've  got  to 
keep  our  distance,  but  we're  going 
to  make  our  time!" 

Under  no  better  circumstance 
could  Mr.  Lawrence  Berkeley  have 
opened  more  favorably  the  little 
campaign  he  had  promised  himself; 
for  when  he  was  not  occupied  doing 
seaman's  duty,  he  was  beside  Jose- 
phine with  a  freedom  it  might  have 
taken  weeks  of  more  formal  acquaint- 
ance to  win. 

"Well,  you  like  it?"  he  said, 
as  a  wave  poured  over  her,  the  sun 
struck  it,  and  she  emerged  shining 
in  a  perfect  halo  of  iridescence. 


120      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"The  next  best  thing  to  being  a 
wave  yourself!"  she  said.  And 
there  was  something  as  splendid  as 
the  sea  and  wind  and  sunshine  in  the 
girl's  intrepidity.  As  for  Mrs.  Pep- 
peridge,  she  was  more  at  home  at 
sea  than  on  shore ;  but  this  girl  could 
hardly  have  seen  the  sea  a  year  ago. 

The  wind  freshened.  They  almost 
forgot  about  the  other  yachts  in  the 
delight  of  their  own  sailing  as, 
beating  up  to  windward,  they 
mounted  and  soared  like  a  bubble 
on  the  great  waves  that  hammered 
the  bows  and  broke  beneath  the  keel, 
as  they  dipped  into  green  hollows 
and  the  crests  powdered  over  them, 
as  they  forged  on  with  the  lee  rail 
under  water  and  lay  flat  along  the 
windward  rail  to  trim  the  boat,  and 
saw  the  huge  wave  towering  over 
them,  stooping  and  lifting  them  in 
its  grasp,  and  now  felt  like  a  straw 
lost  in  the  power  and  play  of  the 
elements,  and  now  challenged  them 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      121 

with  gay  defiance ;  on  one  side,  the 
sea  a  waste  of  weltering  gray  and 
white  waters,  and  on  the  other  a 
stretch  of  tumbling  sapphire  and 
silver — some  sense  of  danger  and 
some  pride  of  daring  and  overcom- 
ing, the  tonic  of  the  strong  air,  and 
a  keen  exhilaration,  making  their 
spirits  rise  and  race  with  the  boat 
and  the  billows.  And  then  they 
lifted  their  heads  and  lost  them- 
selves as  the  three  beauties  before 
them  swept  round  the  stake-boat, 
and  with  the  breaking  of  the  thread 
outswelled  the  spinnakers  in  vast 
opaline  clouds  that  took  a  rosy  tint, 
sweeping  on  and  up  like  gigantic 
mothlike  creatures  of  some  other 
atmosphere  dropped  on  the  waters 
here  with  widespread  wings.  And 
at  the  instant  every  valve  of  every 
whistle  in  the  boats  waiting  on  their 
coming  sprang  open,  and  a  chorus 
of  hoarse  and  of  shrill  blasts  scattered 
the  air. 


122      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Hark!"  cried  Josephine. 

"Do  you  hear  it?"  cried  Mrs.  Pep- 
peridge.  "It  is  the  hunt-music  in 
Tristan!" 

"By  Jove,  so  it  is !"  said  Mr.  Berke- 
ley, as  the  wonderful  chorus  rose 
and  fell  and  rose  again.  "And  quite 
on  the  scale  of  the  occasion.  Ah, 
here  we  go  ourselves!"  And  round- 
ing the  stakeboat  in  their  turn,  their 
own  spinnaker  caught  the  wind,  and 
they  followed  full-breasted  as  a 
mighty  swan. 

"We  shall  make  it,"  said  Mr.  Pep- 
peridge.  "This  settles  it.  There's 
nothing  beats  the  Flying  Scud  before 
the  wind ! ' '  And  they  rushed  along 
with  the  wind  blowing  rainbows  out 
of  the  water  and  the  following  sea 
seething  and  hissing  behind  them  in 
a  vast  sweet  resonancfe. 

"Oh!"  cried  Josephine,  glittering 
and  streaming  with  the  spray,  "I 
wouldn't  have  missed  it  for  a  year  of 
my  life !  The  great  sea  balloon !  The 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      123 

rush  of  it !  The  music  of  the  tremen- 
dous murmur!" 

' '  You  should  be  a  daughter  of  the 
Vikings." 

"I  suppose  it  isn't  a  great  way 
from  the  Viking  to  the  Puritan,"  said 
Josephine.  "And  then  I  can  claim  a 
little  of  the  Dutch,  who  were  born, 
you  know,  like  the  halcyon,  in  a  nest 
upon  the  water." 

"And  while  you  are  looking  up 
your  sea  people,  remember  some 
gold-haired  Venetian  grandmother 
or  other, ' '  said  Mr.  Berkeley,  looking 
at  the  bright  and  dripping  braids. 

"Does  the  prow  of  the  gondola  strike  on  the 

stair? 
Do  the  voices  and  instruments  pause  and 

prepare? 
Oh,  they  faint  on  the  ear  as  the  lamp  on  the 

view, 
I    am   passing — prem6 — but  I  stay  not  for 

you, 

Preme — not  for  you!" 

sang  Josephine. 


124      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

' '  Perhaps  sometime, ' '  he  said,  with 
a  sudden  daring  which  she  knew  she 
had  brought  upon  herself  by  her 
song,  "I  may  hear  you  sing  the  rest 
of  it. 

"I  am  coming — sciar — and  for  you  and  to 
you, 

Sciar — and  to  you!" 

Josephine  hesitated,  an  angry 
word  on  her  tongue,  a  thought  of 
Will,  and  of  his  right  to  resent  this 
flashing  into  her  eyes.  But  she 
looked  directly  before  her  and  said 
nothing.  And  Mr.  Lawrence  Berke- 
ley thought  he  had  never  seen  so 
radiant  a  beauty  as  hers  was  in  the 
virgin  flush  of  her  indignation,  the 
blue  of  the  skies  and  the  seas  mir- 
rored in  her  topaz  eyes  with  a  swift 
green  splendor.  And  then  the 
necessity  of  putting  himself  right 
with  her  made  his  heart  beat  more 
than  any  plunging  into  any  hollow 
of  the  sea,  or  swelling  of  spinnakers, 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED      125 

or  unison  of  steam  whistles  making 
Wagnerian  music,  had  done. 

4 '  I  forgot  myself, ' '  he  said.  ' '  You 
are  enough  to  make  a  wiser  man  do 
so.  And  as  for  you,  come,"  he 
said,  "you  must  forgive  a  moment's 
presumption  that  borrowed  some  of 
the  freedom  of  all  this  freedom  of 
sea  and  air  and  camaraderie!" 

"How  long  have  you  known  me, 
Mr.  Berkeley?" 

"Forever!"  he  exclaimed. 

"Oh,  thank  you,"  she  laughed; 
4 '  I  am  not  so  old. ' ' 

44 A  goddess  is  neither  old  nor 
young. ' ' 

4 'Would  you  speak  this  way  to  a 
Boston  girl  on  a  half-day's  acquaint- 
ance?" she  asked,  and  she  rose  a 
little,  for  they  were  still  half-lying 
along  the  deck,  the  wind  that  was 
with  them  meeting  the  running  tide 
and  making  a  sea  whose  spray  swept 
them  fore  and  aft. 

It  was  just  then  that  one  of  the 


126      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

huge  chance  seas  that  wind  and  tide 
sometimes  roll  up  between  them 
caught  and  distracted  the  helms- 
man's eye  for  half  an  instant.  In 
that  instant  the  boat  had  broached 
to,  and,  although  only  a  second  was 
lost  in  putting  her  before  the  wind 
again,  the  helm  down,  the  crew 
scrambling  to  trim  the  ship,  and  the 
air  lurid  with  Mr.  Pepperidge's 
vo.ciferations,  yet  they  had  seemed 
to  drop  down  some  sinking  depth 
and  one  of  the  long,  furiously  chas- 
ing waves  had  leaped  on  board, 
and  Josephine's  hold  loosened  and 
her  feet  unbraced  by  her  movement, 
in  another  moment  she  would  per- 
haps have  washed  off  with  the  wave, 
or,  at  any  rate,  have  been  struck 
violently  against  the  rail,  had  not 
Mr.  Berkeley  put  out  an  arm  and 
caught  and  kept  her. 

"I  would  speak  to  her  that  way," 
said  he. 

"And  she  would  say:    'Thanks,'  ' 


THE     MAID    HE    MARRIED      127 

she  replied  with  a  laugh,  readjusting 
herself. 

'Do  you  mean  to  pretend  you 
weren't  afraid?"  he  exclaimed. 

"Afraid?  Of  what?  You  don't  fear 
till  you  lose  hold  of  yourself,  and  I 
have  never  yet  felt  as  if  any  harm 
could  befall  me." 

"  By  Jove ! "  said  he.  "  Not  all  the 
waters  of  all  the  seas  can  quench  the 
fire  in  you!" 

"Oh!"  cried  Mrs.  Pepperidge, 
before  Josephine,  who  did  not  un- 
derstand or  like  some  things  in 
her  new  life,  and  who  wondered 
if  the  men  in  it  must  be  either  like 
this  or  like  Mr.  Gervais,  could 
express  her  resentment.  "I  can't 
hear  what  you  are  saying,  but  I 
don't  see  how  you  can  talk  at  all 
when  it's  getting  so  exciting,  and 
it's  now  or  never  with  the  Flying 
Scud!  I  am  just  holding  my 
breath!" 

"Keep  on  holding  it,"  cried  Mr. 


128      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Pepperidge,  his  eyes  fixed  on  a  point 
in  the  distance.  "I  wouldn't  have 
you  lose  it  for  a  farm. ' ' 

A  few  moments  of  silence  as  they 
swept  on  with  their  mad  rush.  It 
seemed  to  Josephine  as  if  the  world 
were  holding  its  breath,  as  well  as 
Mrs.  Pepperidge.  "Oh!"  she  cried 
again,  presently,  "I  don't  know  that 
I  wouldn't  give  a  great  deal  more 
than  a  year  of  my  life  to  have  the 
Flying  Scud  come  in — " 

"When  one  saves  another's  life," 
asked  Mr.  Berkeley,  "has  he  any 
rights  in  it?" 

"When  he  saves  it?"  said  Jose- 
phine. "Why,  you  would  save  a 
fly's!  And  if  you  hadn't  hindered 
me,  one  of  the  crew  would — I  don't 
know  that  Mr.  Pepperidge  would — 
would — " 

"Have  come  about  with  the  boat?" 

"But  he  would  have  tossed  me  the 
life-preservers,  and  there  are  all  the 
steamers  following;  and  you  must 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      129 

take  into  account,  too,  that  I  can 
swim, — a  little." 

"There  they  are!"  exclaimed  Mr. 
Pepperidge.  "Make  a  note,  Pinky!" 
And  a  gun  boomed,  the  wind 
carrying  the  report  in-shore,  and 
only  the  atmospheric  echo  reach- 
ing them  strained  and  refined  away, 
followed  by  the  tutti  of  all  the 
whistles  and  calls  in  a  pandemonium 
of  sound  as  the  winner  crossed  the 
lines.  "Now,  if  all  holds,"  he  said, 
"we  shall  have  made  the  distance 
ourselves  in  but  ten  seconds  less 
than  the  winner,  in  spite  of  that 
dashed  blunder  just  now.  That 
means  a  lot  of  money,  Mrs.  Pepper- 
idge." 

"Why  didn't  you  enter?"  asked 
Mr.  Berkeley. 

"Because  I  was  acquainted  with 
those  ten  seconds,"  said  Mr.  Pep- 
peridge.  "Beastly  bore."  And 
while  he  held  his  stop-watch,  they 
swept  on  with  every  inch  of  canvas 


130      THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED 

spread,  with  every  rope  and  bolt 
strained;  and  deck  wet  and  mast  still 
feathered  from  the  sea,  they  crossed 
the  line  and  had  their  own  ovation. 
"  Part  of  that's  for  Miss  Josephine, " 
said  Mr.  Pepperidge. 

There  was  dancing  that  night  on 
shore  in  one  of  the  great  villas  where 
the  tapestried  walls  and  the  bowery 
recesses  under  the  lofty  palm-trees 
made  it  seem  as  if  the  rout  of  a  sum- 
mer palace  had  emptied  itself  into 
the  forest;  and  as  the  soft  folds  of 
Josephine's  misty  raiment  touched 
Mr.  Berkeley  while  she  swept  by,  he 
was  conscious  of  a  sudden  fullness 
at  his  throat,  she  was  so  beautiful, 
so  full  of  life  and  sweetness,  so  like 
the  roses  she  wore,  whose  fra- 
grance drowned  out  the  breath  of  all 
those  other  flowers,  so  radiant, 
flushed  with  dancing  and  pleasure; 
he  felt  like  closing  his  eyes  as  if 
it  were  too  much  to  see,  or  would 
not  be  the  same  if  he  looked  the 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      131 

second  time.  And  then  he  was 
angry  with  himself,  he  could  not  have 
said  why. 

"  'When  you  do  dance,  I  wish  you 
A  wave  of  the  sea,  that  you  might  ever  do 
Nothing  but  that,'  " 

he  said,  when  he  asked  for  a  dance. 

"All  in   the  day's  work,"  she  re- 
plied.    "I    was    wishing    I   were  a- 
wave  this  morning,  you  know.    But  I 
am  sorry  that  I  haven't  a  dance  left 
till  very  late. ' ' 

"Let  me  have  that,"  he  said. 

He  had  thought  at  first  that  when 
the  time  came  for  his  dance  they 
would  wander  out  and  listen  to  the 
sea  together  under  this  great  blotch 
of  a  waning  moon  high  in  the  dark 
heaven.  But  now  everything  was 
dew-drenched — and,  besides,  if  it 
were  only  for  once  he  was  going  to 
have  this  dance,  he  was  going  to 
clasp  and  hold  her  for  his  own,  des- 
pite herself,  a  dance's  while.  But 


132      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

our  very  wishes  give  us  not  our 
wish;  and  the  dance  with  this  now 
rather  silent  and  distrait  little  girl 
holding  him  almost  at  arm's  length, 
was  not  at  all  the  dance  which  he  had 
imagined. 

They  came  out  after  awhile,  and 
lingered  where  a  rug  lay  on  the 
grass  by  a  fountain  that  tossed  its 
jet  high  in  the  air  with  a  dreamy, 
indifferent  sway,  and  where  a  lemon 
tree  in  its  tub  sweetened  the  air. 
The  tinkle  of  the  fountain,  the 
patter  of  the  lemon  leaves  on  the 
rising  breeze  sounded  with  an  infinite 
triviality  against  the  long,  deep 
breathing  of  the  sea. 

"  'The  unquiet,  bright  Atlantic 
plain,'  "  said  Josephine,  putting  up 
the  cape  of  white  fur  he  had  brought 
her.  The  pallid  moonlight  and  the 
sea-charged  air  became  her,  for 
either  they  toned  down  her  vivid 
color  or  she  was  tired  and  the  color 
had  fallen,  and  with  her  fatigue  some- 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      133 

thing  a  little  more  tender  than  bril- 
liant was  in  her  eyes.  "I  suppose 
you'll  be  tempting  it  again  now?" 

"Yes.  Mr.  Applegate  has  asked 
me  to  tempt  it  with  him  to  Mount 
Desert  and  perhaps  Labrador  while 
the  Pendragon  makes  repairs.  You 
go  along,  of  course?" 

"No.  My  aunt  takes  me  now  to 
the  country.  She  needs  the  rest — 
she  says  I  do,  too." 

And  Mr.  Berkeley  had '  a  sudden 
picture  before  his  eyes  of  Josephine 
leaning  forward  over  a  balustrade  he 
knew  at  the  Applegate  place  at 
Beverley  Farms,  a  trellis  above  her 
waving  its  white  York  roses  in  the 
sunny  wind  everywhere  against  blue 
sky  above  her  and  around  her,  red 
roses  clasped  on  her  breast,  while 
her  hair  escaped  from  a  white  scarf 
blown  off  from  her  head  like  the 
scarf  of  Iris,  her  color  rose  and 
dimpled  and  deepened,  her  wide, 
open  eyes  reflected  the  gleams  of  the 


134      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

sea,  and  her  smile  the  intensity  of 
the  sunshine;  and  in  view  of  the 
vision  he  resolved  on  the  spot  that 
if  he  were  aboard  the  Neckan  should 
lower  its  peak  before  the  flagstaff  of 
Beverley  Farms. 

Every  one  was  tired  on  returning 
to  the  Neckan,  and  Josephine  was 
almost  alone  upon  the  deck  where 
she  lingered.  Perhaps  it  was  be- 
cause she  was  tired  herself  that  a 
vague  melancholy  possessed  her, 
that  pleasant  melancholy  which  has 
no  source  but  languor  and  a  sense  of 
too  much  sweetness  in  life.  A  little 
uncertainty,  too,  was  in  it.  She  was 
not  sure  if  one  man's  love  were 
better  than  another's;  if,  after  all, 
things  were  worth  while;  if  she 
knew  herself  and  her  own  wishes. 
She  had  neglected  to  write  to  Will 
in  these  weeks  that  by  sunlight  and 
midnight  were  burning  out  life  as  if 
in  a  splendid  funeral  pyre  fed  by 
spices  and  fragrant  oils ;  but  if  she 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      135 

had  in  any  slight  measure  forgotten 
him  the  knowledge  of  his  existence 
and  affection  had  been  something 
like  a  subliminal  consciousness,  and 
to-night  all  the  tenderness  in  her 
heart  leaned  towards  him.  She  said 
to  herself  that  she  was  very  weak- 
minded.  The  brooding  darkness  of 
the  heavens,  the  glimmer  over  the 
long  swells  of  the  paler  sea,  the 
shadow  of  the  low  coast,  all  lent 
themselves  to  this  gentle  melan- 
choly. Occasionally  a  strain  of  band 
music  came  on  the  fitful  wind, 
now  full  of  dancing  measures,  now 
far  and  fine  as  elfin  horns.  A  little 
remote  she  divined  the  great  yachts 
lying  like  darker  darknesses,  be- 
trayed only  by  their  colored  lights. 
She  wondered  if  any  one  there  felt 
doubt  or  indecision  or  sadness. 

A  wonderful  hush  seemed  almost 
to  muffle  the  soft  wash  of  the  waters. 
Far  away  was  any  thought  of  ship- 
wreck and  drowning  and  the  dark 


136      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

caves  of  death,  but  what  one  might 
call  the  atmosphere  of  such  a  thought 
was  there.  A  puff  of  land  breeze 
came  down  and  brushed  by  with  a 
remembrance  of  gardens  and  flowers 
and  was  gone;  and  from  one  of  the 
nearer  yachts,  where  some  prima 
donna  was  entertained,  again  the 
music  of  Manon  came,  as  it  had 
done  earlier,  only  it  was  no  longer 
the  cry  of  joyance,  but  the  sobbing 
song  at  the  convent  gates. 

"Is  it  not  my  hand  that  thine  own 
now  presses?"  sang  the  singer.  "Is 
it  not  my  voice?  Am  I  not  Manon?" 
And  Josephine  felt  that  if  she  aban- 
doned herself  a  moment  longer  to 
the  spell,  tears  would  be  a  luxury. 


V 


Mrs.  Applegate  was  far  too  astute 
a  manager  at  this  crisis  to  let  Jose- 
phine become  in  the  least  degree  an 
old  story;  and  she  took  her  away 
the  next  day  at  the  moment  that 
should  cause  her  to  be  remembered 
as  a  beautiful  phantom  flashing  across 
the  vision  of  the  summer  world. 

They  went  first  to  Josephine's 
mother,  who  received  her  with  open 
arms,  and  surrendered  her  with  mis- 
giving and  regret.  Her  sisters,  in 
spite  of  Josephine's  sweetness,  felt 
somewhat  as  if  in  the  presence  of 
some  foreign  visitor,  hardly  recover- 
ing their  poise  before  her  departure. 
It  so  chanced  that  Dr.  Will  Marley 
was  away  with  a  traveling  patient ; 
but  Mrs.  Applegate  was  quite  inno- 
137 


1 3&      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

cent  in  that  regard,  having  hardly 
heard  the  name  of  Dr.  Will  Marley. 

Gentle  and  delightful  as  she  was 
to  them,  they  all  felt  a  little  dif- 
ference in  Josephine,  as  if  she 
were  no  longer  quite  the  simple 
girl  who  had  left  them  six  months 
before;  or  else  their  own  imagina- 
tions surrounded  her  with  an 
atmosphere  that  made  her  seem  re- 
mote. It  was,  however,  only  with 
difficulty  that  Mrs.  Applegate  carried 
her  point  in  relation  to  keeping 
Josephine  with  her  a  while  longer, 
pleading  her  own  poor  health  and 
her  real  loneliness.  "You  can't  con- 
jecture what  it  is,  Maria,"  she  said, 
"to  be  a  childless  old  woman.  You 
are  really  so  solitary ;  and  you  have 
no  bond  upon  the  future. ' ' 

"You  should  have  thought  of  that 
twenty  years  ago,"  said  Mrs.  Grey, 
grimly. 

"I  have  grown  so  fond  of  Jose- 
phine," urged  Mrs.  Applegate. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      139 

"And  you  have  the  others.  You 
can't  begin  to  be  selfish,  Maria,  at 
this  time  in  your  life. ' ' 

If  Josephine  said  nothing  it  was 
because  she  hardly  knew  which  way 
to  turn  between  her  diverging 
inclinations ;  and  then  she  was  a  little 
sore  that  the  unwitting  Dr.  Will 
should  have  chosen  this  time  for  his 
absence.  So  she  went  down  with 
her  aunt  to  the  Farms;  and  there 
Mrs.  Applegate  gave  out  that  she 
herself  was  too  ill  to  see  people, 
— remarkably  blooming  invalid  that 
she  was — and  kept  Josephine  in  such 
rest  and  quiet  as  she  might  till 
Mr.  Applegate 's  return,  when  he 
took  them  on  a  journey  to  the 
Pacific  coast  before  returning  to 
town. 

Once  again  in  the  house  in  town, 
Mrs.  Applegate  felt  a  keen  relish 
for  the  work  she  had  laid  out  for 
herself;  and  under  Mr.  Applegate 's 
surprising  encouragement,  and  her 


140      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

own  gentle  flattery  of  the  society 
reporters,  her  entertainments,  as 
Mr.  Gervais  phrased  it,  made  the 
town  hum.  One  gayety  followed 
another,  and  although  she  knew 
nothing  of  it,  Josephine's  was  the 
name  to  conjure  with.  She  was 
engaged  long  beforehand  for  every 
germ  an ;  she  was  asked  to  name  her 
convives  at  dinner;  and  to  be  seen 
with  her  was  almost  enough  to  make 
any  other  girl  the  fashion  too.  She 
did  not  dress  a  great  deal — one  nicer 
gown,  and  the  rest  furbished  and 
made  over  from  her  aunt's  former 
toilettes,  answered  all  purposes  still ; 
but  whether  she  was  going  out  in  the 
carriage  in  the  white  cloth  trimmed 
with  sables,  or  down  to  dinner  in  the 
palest  of  pale  green  sea-nymph 
tulle,  or  in  the  white  silk  covered 
with  old  blonde,  never  with  any 
jewel  but  her  pearls,  but  always 
with  myriads  of  roses,  she  was  some- 
thing distinctly  different  from  the 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      141 

other   girls,  and   distinctly   sweeter 
than  any  of  them. 

The  first  time  that  Josephine  wore 
her  pretty  white  cloth  suit  was  at 
Mrs.  Boylston's  musicale ;  for  music 
being  much  the  fashion,  that  lady 
was  very  musical,  and  a  world- 
known  prima  donna  who  had  social 
relations,  being  in  town,  had 
promised  to  make  a  couple  of  her 
songs  the  feature  of  the  occasion, 
which  was  a  matter  of  great  gratula- 
tion.  Of  course,  it  was  impossible 
for  Mrs.  Boylston  to  leave  out  her 
father  and  his  family;  and  entirely 
unconscious  how  unwelcome  she 
was,  Josephine  appeared,  and 
Harry  Gardner,  and  Harry  Here- 
ford, and  Otis  Mason,  and  Lawrence 
Berkeley,  and  Tom  Scollay,  and 
the  others  were  in  her  train  at  once, 
as  bees  appear  out  of  an  empty 
horizon  when  sweets  are  exposed. 

Mr.  Applegate,  in  his  genial  mood, 
had  ordered  to  his  daughter's  house 


142      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

some  magnificent  palms,  a  blossom- 
ing orange,  and  a  white  azalea- bush 
that  filled  a  whole  window,  with  a 
world  of  Madame  de  Waterville 
roses — those  beautiful  things  blush- 
ing all  along  the  edges,  but  so  pure, 
so  white,  so  more  and  more  delicate 
at  the  heart.  "They  are  like  you, 
those  roses,"  whispered  Mr.  Law- 
rence Berkeley.  It  was  Lawrence 
Berkeley  who,  the  first  night  she 
danced  with  him  that  winter,  had 
murmured, 

"  'Pearl-white,  you  poets  liken  Palma's  neck, 
And  yet  what  spoils  an  orient  like  some 

speck 
Of  genuine  white  turning   its   own  white 

gray?'  " 

"Even  the  dancing-men,  half  out 
of  breath,  talk  Browning  here, ' '  she 
told  her  uncle  afterward,  to  his 
chuckling  delight. 

"Lawrence  Berkeley  is  hardly 
what  you  might  call  a  dancing-man," 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      143 

said  her  aunt.     "He  is  past  his  first 
youth.     He  has — " 

"Had  his  nights  in  Egypt," 
said  Mr.  Applegate.  "When  he 
dances  now,  some  one  else  pays 
the  piper." 

But  Josephine  had  disliked  the 
familiarity  of  his  compliments  since 
she  had  first  received  them.  It  was, 
she  felt,  only  a  somewhat  more 
refined  type  of  the  Gervais  business. 
And  she  moved  away  now,  taking  a 
low  seat  in  a  corner,  half -hidden  by 
the  palms  there,  to  listen  to  the 
pianist,  who,  in  a  circle  of  breathless 
women  leaning  forward  like  pale, 
panting  maenads,  was  tearing  the 
piano  to  pieces  as  fast  as  he  could, 
and  to  enjoy  the  rich  breath  of  the 
flowers  and  the  lovely  room;  and 
finding  little  Bertie  Boylston  there 
with  his  white  face  and  starry  eyes, 
who,  after  a  grave  survey  of  her 
smiling  beauty  and  her  toilette, 
slipped  his  little  hand  in  hers  and 


144      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

leaned  his  pretty  head  on  her 
shoulder. 

It  was  not  so  simple,  however, 
escaping  Lawrence  Berkeley. 

"Is  it  difficult,  do  you  know?"  said 
he,  leaning  over  her,  with  one  hand 
on  the  pedestal  that  held  up  a  bronze, 
and  sure  that  his  voice  should  make 
no  marked  increment  to  the  noise. 
"You  remember  what  Dr.  Johnson 
said?"  Josephine  laughed.  "It  is 
heresy,"  he  said.  "But  keep  my 
secret.  Why?  Oh,  there  are  all 
sorts  of  inquisitions,  you  know. ' ' 

"There  ought  to  be  for  those 
that  don't  love  music,"  she  whis- 
pered. 

"Well,  Liszt  played  this  once  to 
me." 

"Liszt!" 

"Ah,  when  one  is  young  one  ven- 
tures, one  exploits  the  matter,  one 
wants  to  satisfy  one's  self,  to  know 
the  thing  at  its  best!" 

"But  did  Liszt  unlock  his  treasures 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      1 45 

to  one  who  wishes  they  were  impos- 
sible?" 

"Oh,  there  are  golden  keys!" 

"What  did  he  care  for  golden 
keys?" 

"All  the  same,  they  unlock  every- 
thing. I  am  not  sure  they  would 
not  unlock  the  treasures  of  the 
heavens.  However,  all  golden  keys 
are  not  necessarily  connected  with 
the  jingling  of  the  guinea."  He 
looked  at  her  horrified  face  and 
laughed.  "I  did  not  say  I  didn't  love 
music,"  he  said.  "Do  you  recall 
the  people  in  Venice  when  Galuppi 
plays?  'I  can  always  leave  off  talk- 
ing when  I  hear  a  master  play. '  But 
for  my  part  the  voice,  the  singing 
voice  divine,  is  the  delicious  thing — " 

"This  is  delicious  to  me,"  she 
said,  drawing  Bertie  a  little  closer. 
"And,  if  you  please,  I  want  to  hear 
it." 

But  the  pianist  had  done  his  best, 
and  the  violin  and  piano  sonata  was 


1 46      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

at  an  end,  and  the  prima  donna  had 
not  appeared.  The  violinist  played 
a  short  Vieuxtemps  solo,  and  the 
pianist  a  wonderful  Rubenstein 
"Portrait";  and,  with  no  prima 
donna  yet,  the  people  began  to  look 
about  them  questioningly. 

"What's  the  matter,  Frances?" 
said  Mr.  Applegate,  as  his  daughter 
brushed  by.  "  Where's  your  singer? 
Any  hitch?" 

"Oh,  I'm  half  beside  myself!" 
Mrs.  Boylston  exclaimed.  "She 
hasn't  come.  I  don't  know  what  to 
make  of  it!  I've  sent  the  carriage 
for  her."  And  just  then  a  note  was 
put  into  her  fluttering  hands.  "Oh ! 
oh!"  she  whispered,  her  whisper 
really  almost  sepulchral.  "She 
isn't  coming!  The  day  is  so  damp 
and  raw  she  doesn't  dare  venture. 
Oh,  the  treacherous  thing !  She  never 
meant — " 

"Tut,  tut!  Let  her  alone.  Let 
her  stay  and  take  care  of  her  pre- 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      147 

cious  voice.  She's  no  loss,  with 
Josephine  at  hand.  Josephine  can 
sing  her  off  her  feet." 

"Oh,  father,  you  don't  know!  The 
Van  Schermers  are  here;  and  it  is 
so  mortifying — " 

"Pshaw!  Just  ask  Josephine  to 
take  her  place,  I  tell  you. ' ' 

"Josephine! "with  an  infinite  con- 
tempt. 

"Yes,  Josephine." 

"Oh,  you're  gone  daft  over  that 
girl!" 

"I  overlook  your  impertinence, 
Frances,  on  account  of  your  excite- 
ment. Do  you  suppose  I  know 
nothing  about  music?  You  haven't 
heard  Josephine.  Well,  you'll  never 
have  a  better  chance.  Here,  where 
is  she?" 

"But,  father!  father!"  she  ex- 
claimed, bewildered,  and  vainly  fol- 
lowing him  as  he  moved  off.  "I 
can't  have  any  such  nonsense.  Your 
little  singing  country  girl — " 


148      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Josephine,"  Mr.  Applegate  was 
saying,  "will  you  sing  for  Mrs.  Boyl- 
ston?  It  seems  to  be  rather  neces- 
sary— ' ' 

"Really?"  said  Josephine,  with 
hesitation;  and  then  rising  slowly. 
"Do  you  want  me  to,  uncle?  Why, 
yes,  certainly,  if  you  will  stand 
beside  me."  And  in  spite  of  Mrs. 
Boylston  with  her  two  outstretched, 
trembling  hands,  Mr.  Applegate  was 
leading  Josephine  to  the  piano.  And 
there  was  a  moment  or  two  of  mur- 
muring with  the  accompanist,  and 
then  the  voice  broke  forth,  and 
swelled,  and  filled  the  rooms  with  an 
unutterable  sweetness,  and  seemed 
only  not  to  mount  to  heaven  because 
the  place  was  heaven  now,  with  the 
blushing  face,  the  shining  eyes,  the 
open  mouth,  the  silver  voice  of  an 
angel. 

"The  musicale  went  all  to  pieces," 
said  Mr.  Applegate,  afterwards,  to 
his  wife,  who  had  not  gone. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED       149 

"They  wanted  no  more  fiddling  or 
tinkling,  nothing  but  that  singing. 
And  Frances  never  got  so  much  for 
so  little  in  her  life.  I'm  glad  you 
didn't  go;  something  would  have 
happened  to  you.  Frances  was  just 
in  the  seventh  heaven,  if  she  could 
be  there  and  groveling  with  grati- 
tude at  the  same  time.  I  hope  it 
will  last.  As  for  Josephine,  when  it 
was  all  over  she  was  just  little  Jose- 
phine, so  used  to  singing  that  she 
didn't  know  she  had  done  anything 
extraordinary.  I  heard  one  of  the 
Vassall-Royals  say  it  was  'almost — 
almost  too  professional,  you  know.' 
Vassall-Royal  deteriorated  that  race 
when  he  married  an  idiot.  What  has 
become  of  Josephine's  nerves,  by- 
the-way?  Didn't  I  hear  you  say 
something  about  their  being  all  tired 
out  once?" 

"Oh,  but  this  is  a  new  set  of 
nerves  in  use  now,  you  know,"  his 
wife  replied.  "The  nerves  of 


150     THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED 

novelty  and  pleased  excitement,  and 
freedom  from  care,  and  all  that. 
The  old  nerves  are  resting — " 

"Well,  I  hope  the  new  nerves 
won't  tire,  then.  Otis  Mason  is 
simply  beside  himself  about  her,  I 
hear,  and  he  is — yes,  he  is  a  noble 
fellow.  And  Billy  Somerset  is 
engagt,  too.  By  Jove!  if  she  sees 
anything  to  like  in  Billy  Somerset  I 
shan't  think  so  well  of  her!  And 
Lawrence  Berkeley  has — " 

"Ah!  Lawrence  Berkeley?' Yes." 
" — Has  asked  to  see  me  on  some 
particular  business  to-night.  He's 
a  man  in  a  thousand.  And,  by  Jove ! 
my  dear,  with  his  family  and  his 
money — why,  his  income — his  in- 
come alone  is  close  on  a  half -million 
a  year.  He  could  marry  a  royal 
princess.  Though,  to  be  sure — 
However,  all  that's  a  great  while 
ago.  It's  forgotten  long  ago. 
That's  what  you've  done  for  your 
niece,  Mrs.  Applegate!" 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED      !$! 

Mr.  Applegate  and  Dr.  Will 
Marley  were  not  at  all  of  the  same 
mind  as  to  what  had  been  done  for 
the  niece.  As  Will  read  Josephine's 
last  letter  late  that  night — one  of  the 
letters  he  had  waited  for  and  ex- 
pected and  longed  for,  coming  far 
less  frequently  now  than  in  the 
beginning,  covering  fewer  pages, 
dwelling  more  on  the  gay  life  than 
on  her  love — he  had  a  great  sinking 
at  his  heart.  And  driving  his  lonely 
way  over  the  hills  by  the  flying 
moonlight  of  a  dry  and  wintry  gale, 
he  was  full  of  melancholy  and  fore- 
boding. That  aunt  and  uncle,  he 
felt;  must  have  other  plans  for  Jose- 
phine than  that  she  should  become 
the  wife  of  a  poor  country  doctor. 
Not  that  he  distrusted  the  faithful- 
ness of  his  darling,  but  he  distrusted 
himself;  he  had  so  little  to  offer. 
And,  alas!  if  Josephine,  weighing 
these  things  and  those  things  in  the 
balance,  found  these  things  wanting ! 


152      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Poor  little  Josephine!  With  all  the 
success  that  befell  her,  and  the  royal 
progress  she  was  making,  in  the  view 
of  her  aunt  and  uncle,  she  was  in 
reality  hard  bested  in  those  days. 

"I  hope,"  Mr.  Applegate  had  said 
to  his  wife,  "that  there  is  no  country 
lover  to  complicate  things  now. ' ' 
And  although  Josephine  heard  him, 
she  said  nothing.  All  the  world  at 
home  knew  what  Will  and  she  were 
to  each  other;  and  she  had  never 
thought  about  it,  but  had  uncon- 
sciously taken  it  for  granted  that  all 
the  world  here  knew,  too.  And  thus 
she  had  received  most  of  the  atten- 
tions paid  her  as  meaning  just  the 
kindly  liking  and  friendship  that 
Rob  Campbell's  was  —  poor  dear 
Rob  Campbell,  working  might  and 
main  at  college,  where  he  had 
chosen  to  starve  his  way  through 
rather  than  take  a  lesser  chance  at 
learning.  But  before  she  could 
command  her  blush  and  speak,  if  she 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      153 

had  intended  to  do  so,  Lawrence 
Berkeley  had  been  announced,  and 
she  was  to  thank  him  for  the  flowers 
he  had  sent  on  some  pretext, 
wonderful  white  orchids.  And  then 
there  must  be  singing.  And  he  was 
still  there  when  it  was  time  for 
lunch ;  and  he  went  out  with  them 
to  the  reception  and  the  tea ;  and  she 
danced  with  him  at  the  Devonshire's 
german ;  and  if  she  slept  the  greater 
part  of  the  next  day,  he  was  beside 
her  at  Mrs.  Dartmouth's  dinner;  and 
his  seat  was  next  her  own  at  the 
theater  party  afterwards ;  and  it  was 
he  that  wrapped  her  cloak  about  her 
and  put  her  in  the  carriage  with  her 
chaperon,  and  who  came  in  for  five- 
o'clock  tea  next  day  to  inquire  for 
her,  and  was  to  be  found  there  by 
the  other  swains  as  they  arrived — 
those  youths  beginning  to  think  that 
Lawrence  Berkeley  was  something 
too  much  in  evidence,  unless  their 
part  in  the  play  was  over. 


154      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

For  if  there  were  a  private  view 
at  a  studio,  or  a  rare  collection  of 
curios  to  which  scarcely  any  one  had 
access,  it  was  Lawrence  Berkeley 
that  took  her  there.  If  there  was  a 
more  delightful  concert  than  ordi- 
nary, the  empty  chair  beside  her  own 
was  in  some  mysterious  manner 
always  taken  by  Lawrence  Berkeley. 
It  was  he,  now  that  Lent  had  come, 
who  met  them  just  on  the  church 
steps,  and  took  her  from  her  aunt  for 
a  long  walk  up  the  windy  avenue 
under  the  cold  blue  sky.  It  was  he 
who  went  with  her  to  see  the  great 
library  before  it  was  opened  to  the 
world  and  explained  to  her  the 
scheme  of  the  frescoes  where  the 
pristine  simplicity  of  art  on  the  first 
floor  led  to  the  graphic  interpreta- 
tion of  romance  on  the  next,  and, 
still  mounting,  to  the  utmost  com- 
plexity of  decoration  and  of  religion 
on  a  flight  higher.  It  was  he  that 
she  turned  to  for  sympathy  in 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      155 

delight  at  some  phrase  of  music, 
with  some  picture  that  led  your 
feeling  and  your  fancy  into  the 
depths.  It  was  he  whose  quiet 
smile  told  her  if  she  had  admired 
with  too  much  of  the  newness  of 
youth.  It  was  he  who,  apropos  of 
everything,  had  the  amusing  story, 
the  ready  reminiscence;  he  who, 
having  been  the  world  over,  had 
gleaned  something  from  everywhere 
that  had  escaped  the  eyes  of  others, 
who,  if  he  were  simply  blast  and 
commonplace  to  the  rest  of  the  world, 
seemed  to  her  the  most  new  and 
original  person  she  had  met,  ac- 
quaintance with  him  being  like  a 
doorway  into  a  life  of  which  she  had 
never  dreamed  till  she  came  to  her 
aunt's  house. 

Mrs.  Applegate  had  conquered  her 
prejudices  in  favor  of  a  chaperon 
sufficiently  to  allow  Mr.  Berkeley  to 
take  Josephine  out  on  the  Road  one 
bright  day  with  his  horse  Wotan, 


156      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

the  powerful  white  creature  flashing 
along  in  his  gold  trappings,  the 
embodiment  of  the  force  and  fury  of 
a  wintry  gale.  Wrapped  in  the 
white  bear-skins,  the  bells  them- 
selves seeming  to  flash  with  sound, 
cutting  the  wind  as  they  went,  Jose- 
phine was  so  lost  in  the  delight  of 
swiftness  that  she  felt  as  if  she  were 
a  spirit  fleeing  through  space.  The 
splendid  scene  of  the  long  shining 
road  under  the  blazing  blue  sky, 
the  lines  of  sleighs  dashing  along 
behind  the  great  hackneys  and 
the  thoroughbreds,  the  rosy  faces, 
the  rich  furs,  the  gay  greetings, 
the  bells,  the  cries — it  made  the 
country  sleigh-ride  seem  like  plod- 
ding along  on  an  ox  sled.  Ah, 
no !  Only  for  a  moment !  There  was 
one  sleigh-ride  she  remembered  with 
a  sudden  thrill;  there  were  many 
sleigh-rides  that  it  warmed  her  heart 
to  remember.  And  then,  in  the 
excitement  of  the  dash,  she  felt  in 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      157 

some  nameless  way  that  she  had 
done  her  duty  in  remembering;  and 
she  abandoned  herself  to  the  pleas- 
ure of  this  moment,  when  it  seemed 
as  if  the  superb  teams  on  either  side 
divided  to  make  way  for  them,  and 
they  were  flashing  down  the  road 
like  living  light.  For  half  a  minute 
Josephine  shrank  as  though  she  were 
being  taken  for  a  circus  girl ;  but  the 
next,  the  strife,  the  speed,  the 
magnificent  moment,  overcame  her, 
and  she  would  have  left  Harry 
Hereford's  Peg  behind  if  the  effort 
had  thrown  them  into  the  nearest  star. 

"That  was  fine,"  said  Lawrence 
Berkeley,  when  they  had  forsaken 
the  splendors  of  the  Road,  and 
were  going  more  quietly  homeward. 
"It  makes  a  fellow  feel  immortal, 
by  all  that's  good!  This  horse  is 
Wotan  himself,  but  Pegasus  gave 
him  a  close  call ! ' ' 

"It  is  like  a  dream,"  said  Jose- 
phine. "All  the  faces,  the  color,  the 


158      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

motion.  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been 
inside  of  a  bubble. ' ' 

"It  is  the  most  brilliant  scene  in 
the  world,"  he  said.  "It  beats  the 
Prado,  and  that  beats  Europe.  I 
don't  know  of  a  keener  excitement, 
unless  it  is  when  on  a  sledge  behind 
six  great  black  Hungarian  horses  on 
a  wolf  hunt  in  the  mountains  over 
there. ' ' 

"Oh!"  shivered  Josephine. 

"Yes,  there  is  a  tang  which  gives 
flavor — the  icy  air,  the  loneliness, 
the  vastness.  As  for  the  danger,  I 
don't  know  if  it  is  any  more  danger- 
ous than  our  drive  to-day. " 

"To-day!" 

"Well,  than  a  tiger  ^hunt  in  an 
Indian  jungle;  not  the  sort  I  saw 
them  whip  up  for  the  Prince,  but  the 
real  man-eater  whose  tooth  ripped 
my  arm  up  to  the  shoulder  once.  I 
had  the  tooth  cut  for  a  seal,  though. ' ' 

"Oh!"  shivered  Josephine  again. 

"Come,  this  is  too  bad, "  he  laughed. 


159 

"It  makes  my  blood  run  cold." 

"More  than  this  blast  from  the 
bay?  But  it  wasn't  half  so  blood- 
curdling as  when  a  fellow  on  the 
bank  of  the  Hoogly  walked  up  the 
sky  on  a  thread  he  threw  before 
him,  and  disappeared  there.  Be- 
cause I  walked  up  with  him,  and 
hung  there  alone  in  mid-air,  scared 
out  of  my  wits,  till  I  gently  sank  to 
earth  again." 

"It  isn't  possible!"  she  cried. 

"No,  I  don't  suppose  it  was.  I 
suppose  the  scamp  hypnotized  me. 
But  it  was  all  the  same  as  possible. 
And  as  for  possible,  who  can  say 
what  is  or  what  is  not?  There  is  no 
marvel  the  size  of  th'e  fact  that  we 
are  here  on  this  ball  swinging  in 
space  to-day.  For  my  part,  I  some- 
times doubt  that. ' ' 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean!" 
cried  Josephine. 

"Here  we  are  at  the  door,"  he 
said.  "I  don't  doubt  that  I  have  had 


160      THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED 

as  glorious  an  hour  to-day  as  I  ever 
had  in  my  life!" 

"Oh,  it  was  fine!"  said  Josephine. 

And  then  little  Bertie,  with  his 
nurse,  was  waiting  for  her  on  the 
steps,  and  there  was  a  minute  of 
gay  snowballing  with  the  child,  and 
there  was  the  excuse  of  taking  him 
round  to  his  own  door,  for  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  hour. 

"  'And  what  if  heaven  prove  that  she  and  I 
Ride,  ride  together,  forever  ride!'  " 

said  Lawrence. 

' '  But  that, ' '  for  the  sake  of  saying 
something,  "was  on  horseback,"  said 
Josephine. 

"This  is  a  white  horse,"  said 
Bertie,  seeing  his  moment  to  join  the 
conversation.  "And  it  makes  music 
wherever  it  goes. ' ' 

"I  thought  it  was  the  lady  who 
made  the  music,  Bertie,"  said  Law- 
rence. "This  lady  does." 

"Yes,   I  guess  she  does,"  Bertie 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      l6l 

replied,  slowly,  turning  the  thought 
over.  "I  call  her  the  singing  lady. 
I  go  to  see  her,  and  she  sings  to  me. 
She  sings  about  'I  have  to  go  to  bed 
by  day. '  I  love  her  very  much. ' ' 

"Out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and 
sucklings!"  exclaimed  Lawrence. 

"Don't  you?"  said  Bertie,  gravely. 

"Oh,  to  be  a  child  again!  With 
liberty  to  speak  your  mind!"  said 
Lawrence,  glancing  over  at  her 
boldly,  and  dropping  his  eyes  swiftly. 

And  then  they  were  at  Bertie's 
door,  and  Mr.  Applegate  was  just 
coming  out,  and  Josephine  walked 
home  with  him. 


VI 

On  the  street,  or  in  the  nouse,  now, 
in  some  way  Lawrence  Berkeley 
managed — albeit  possibly  with  some 
quiet  assistance — to  be  with  Jose- 
phine almost  every  one  of  her  wak- 
ing hours  that  she  was  not  writing 
for  her  uncle — whose  determination 
towards  authorship  was,  he  said, 
something  in  the  air  of  the  place — so 
that  she  had  no  time  to  think  or  to 
remember,  except  under  the  force  of 
a  sort  of  magnetism ;  for  he  had  some 
magnetism  of  his  own.  It  was  he 
whose  atmosphere  was  surrounding 
her  and  overpowering  her,  till,  sud- 
denly recalling  those  words  of 
her  uncle,  she  began  to  see  what 
they  meant.  They  —  they  meant 
nothing!  She  was  not  a  simple- 
ton !  As  if  she  could  not  take  care 
163 


164     THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED 

of  herself!  She  was  not  going  to 
think  at  all !  The  present  was  sweet, 
was  full,  was  delightful;  by-and-by 
it  would  all  be  so  dull,  so  small,  so 
poor.  Will,  to  be  sure —  But  she 
was  not  altogether  certain — Would  it 
be  Will?  Hush,  hush!  say  nothing, 
think  nothing,  feel  nothing!  Only 
just  here,  and  now,  and  the  things  of 
to-day,  were  so  pleasant! 

Yes,  they  were  very  pleasant. 
Her  aunt  was  so  happy  in  her,  her 
uncle  was  idolizing  her,  she  was  re- 
ceiving tribute  from  the  whole  world. 
No  charity  concert,  no  musical  event, 
and  no  affair  of  any  other  kind  was 
complete  without  her.  She,  who  had 
pinched  along  on  a  little  iwenty- 
dollar-a-month  school  salary,  could 
command  the  income  of  a  fortune  in 
a  church  choir  if  she  wished ;  could 
possibly  command,  she  had  dis- 
covered, a  fortune  itself  on  the  stage, 
with  but  little  training ;  but  was  put 
beyond  all  need  of  anything  but 


THE   MAID    HE    MARRIED      165 

singing  for  singing's  sake  by  the 
love  and  prodigality  of  those  about 
her.  In  fact,  the  presence  of  this 
sunbeam  in  his  house  had  so  warmed 
Mr.  Applegate's  heart  that  his  habits 
were  revolutionized,  and  life  was  a 
much  more  serene  thing  there  than 
it  had  wont  to  be.  He  had  not 
only  opened  his  purse,  but  he  had 
forgotten  to  close  it,  and  did  not 
seem  to  know  how  to  lavish  enough 
just  now.  Mrs.  Boylston  and  Mrs. 
Bulfinch  might  wonder  where  all 
this  young  splendor  came  from,  but 
they  could  not  be  sure;  and  as, 
whenever  anything  very  superior 
was  bestowed  on  Josephine,  some- 
thing very  fine  was  apt  to  come  to 
one  of  them,  by  means  of  Mrs. 
Applegate's  tact,  they  kept  their 
suspicions  to  themselves,  and, 
anxious  as  they  were  concerning  the 
future,  bided  their  time  in  what 
patience  they  might. 

"Father's  fads  always  occupy  him 


166     THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

for  a  while,"  said  Frances,  in  the 
depths  of  the  sisterly  council,  "and 
then  they  go  up  in  smoke. " 

"I  should  agree  with  you  if  he 
hadn't  married  the  last  one,"  said 
Laura. 

"I  sometimes  think, "  said  Frances, 
"that  he  might  have  done  worse." 

Mrs.  Applegate  understood  the 
world  around  her  in  most  directions ; 
but  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  she 
thought  that  perhaps  she  had  builded 
better  than  she  knew  for  the  child  in 
asking  her  here,  and  that  if  Mr. 
Applegate  should  incline  eventually 
to  bequeath  her  a  portion  of  his 
wealth  it  would  do  no  harm  to 
Frances  and  Laura,  who  already 
had  great  abundance,  and  for  whom 
there  would  still  be  abundance  left. 
And  if  he  did  not,  she  might  need 
nothing,  should  Lawrence  Berkeley 
win. 

Nothing  was  farther  from  Jose- 
phine's thoughts  than  the  gaining 


THE  MAID   HE   MARRIED     167 

of  bequests  or  the  possession  of 
wealth.  In  her  outer  consciousness 
she  had  come  down  here  again  be- 
cause her  aunt  had  no  daughter, 
because  she  was  to  go  on  regaining 
her  nervous  equilibrium  by  bring- 
ing into  action  powers  and  sensa- 
tions and  emotions — nerves  hitherto 
unused  by  her ;  to  please  her  uncle, 
moreover;  and  she  was  to  go  back 
in  the  spring  and  marry  Will; 
rather  hoping,  too,  when  she  first 
came,  that  her  aunt  would  feel  like 
giving  them  the  little  house  with 
the  piazza  and  bay-window — even 
sometimes  furnishing  it  in  her 
fancies,  but  giving  that  up  impa- 
tiently some  time  since — the  rooms, 
she  would  have  said  now  to  herself, 
had  she  said  anything  about  them, 
where  you  could  stand  in  the  middle 
and  touch  the  four  walls!  If  in  her 
inner  consciousness  anything  else 
was  beginning  to  shape  itself  as  to 
the  pleasure  of  this  sort  of  life — of 


168      THE   MAID   HE   MARRIED 

the  yachting  and  coaching  in  the 
summer  that  she  heard  about,  of  the 
foreign  travel  of  which  people  spoke 
casually  as  of  this  or  that  dinner,  and 
a  glimpse  of  which  she  had  had,  of 
moonlight  nights  in  Venice,  of  a 
dahabeeyah  on  the  Nile,  of  all  the 
pleasures  that  become  a  man  of 
millions — she  was  not  yet  aware  of 
it,  or  only  so  vaguely  that  she  was 
neither  startled  nor  self-reproached. 
She  was  having  a  wonderfully 
delightful  season,  drinking  this  cup 
of  success  to  its  sweet  rich  lees,  and 
she  had  even  forgotten  to  write  to 
Will  and  tell  him  of  it  this  last  two 
weeks  and  more.  How  could  she 
tell  him,  indeed,  that  Lawrence 
Berkeley  was  such  a  pleasant  fellow ; 
that  he  was  so  friendly,  so  charm- 
ing, so  entirely  a  man  that  any 
unsophisticated  girl  might  fall  in 
love  with? — that  more  than  one  girl, 
had  Josephine  but  known  it,  had 
fallen  in  love  with,  to  her  sorrow! 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      169 

She  was  half- waked  from  this 
pleasant,  trance-like  condition  one 
afternoon  at  the  Symphony,  but  only 
half.  The  soloist  had  been  satisfac- 
tory ;  there  had  been  some  catching 
lighter  numbers,  f  nil  of  caprice  and 
melody  and  witchery,  the  wildness 
of  a  dance  of  death  without  the 
wickedness.  Mrs.  Applegate  had 
gone  to  a  meeting  of  the  Zenana. 
Flock,  expecting  to  be  late,  and 
leaving  her  seat  for  any  one  who 
might  choose  to  take  it.  Josephine 
talked  a  little  with  an  acquaintance 
on  her  right,  and  then  she  looked 
round  on  the  brilliant  audience  of 
which  she  was  one,  at  Beethoven 
himself  there  in  the  bronze,  listen- 
ing with  down-bent  head  and  features 
that  seemed  but  a  chord  of  his  own 
music  made  not  audible,  but  visible, 
while  she  breathed  the  fragrance  of 
her  breast-knot  of  violets. 

The  dance  music  had  left  her 
tingling  with  pleasure;  but  all  at 


1 70      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

once  she  was  aware,  as  one  is  when 
awaking  in  the  morning  after  trouble, 
memory  of  which  is  not  yet  clear, 
that  her  buoyancy  had  fallen,  and 
there  was  sorrow  somewhere.  She 
smiled  at  herself  then;  the  sym- 
phony had  begun,  the  orchestra 
played  as  one  soul.  Ah,  yes,  she 
understood  it ;  there  were  the  three 
notes  that  some  one  had  said  were 
the  strokes  of  Fate  knocking  at 
the  door — and  even  while  she  heard 
them  her  thoughts  reverted  to 
herself,  unconscious  of  the  music, 
but  vaguely  led  by  it.  Yes,  yes, 
they  said,  it  was  a  life  of  splendor, 
but  it  was  not  her  life.  Those  born 
in  it  were  swept  along  it  as  upon 
an  undercurrent,  and  it  was  not  all  a 
thing  of  the  senses  with  them ;  they 
could  live  and  aspire  beyond  it.  But 
she — she  observed  it,  pictured  it, 
criticised  it,  luxuriated  in  it;  pres- 
ently, it  would  enwrap  her;  if  she 
made  it  her  own,  she  would  become 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      i;i 

— she  would  become — oh,  misery !  all 
that  Gervais  was.  What  made  her 
shudder?  Was  it  a  dim  blood- poison- 
ing apprehension,  a  terror  of  going 
down  into  the  dust,  of  developing 
into  a  something  ignoble,  of  the 
evanishment  of  soul  in  matter?  Was 
it  the  sense  of  abasement?  Was  it  the 
sudden  blare  of  the  brass,  the  wild 
Titanic  harmony,  as  if  the  elements 
fought  together?  She  was  all  at 
once  in  a  strange  commotion.  Her 
own  paltriness,  her  abandonment  to 
her  senses,  the  taint  in  her,  were 
singing  and  screaming  and  strug- 
gling defiantly  together.  The  cruelty 
that  could  break  a  lover's  heart;  the 
earthliness  that  would  be  a  mildew  on 
his  life  if  she  had  not  left  him ;  the 
sorrow,  the  misery,  the  despair  that 
had  played  him  false — and,  oh,  what 
was  life  worth  without  him?  There 
were  darker  depths  even  than  death. 
Her  fan  was  over  her  eyes.  She 
did  not  know  that  she  heard  the 


172      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

music.  Some  one  took  the  next  seat 
unnoticed.  She  was  on  another 
plane,  in  another  sphere,  at  bay,  and 
challenging  destiny ;  and  she  hardly 
heard  the  songs  of  hope  in  the 
andante,  melting  in  tears  as  some 
pale  autumn  sunshine  melts  in  rain, 
before  the  great  purple  curtain  of 
cloud  in  the  scherzo  was  rising, 
rising,  as  if  from  some  high  hill 
country  of  perfect  joy  beyond, 
around  whose  base  the  clouds  of  sor- 
row still  lightly  drifted.  Now  the 
clouds  crept  higher  again  and  hid 
the  heavenly  summits;  hope  failed, 
and  the  basses  moaned.  Then  a 
wind  swept  after  them — up,  up,  up 
on  the  flutes,  and  scattered  the 
mists.  Hope  spread  her  wings 
again;  assurance  came  with  the 
clash  of  kettle-drums,  the  vast  sweep 
of  the  violins,  the  triumph  of  the 
march;  and  higher  and  higher  and 
farther  and  farther  the  great  breath 
went,  stripping  away  all  shadow. 


THE    MAID    HE   MARRIED      173 

The  heights  shone  calm  and  clear; 
myriads  of  gay  souls  sparkled  and 
were  glad  with  the  violins  out  there 
in  the  wide  sunlight ;  tune  and  color 
and  joy  and  light  and  love  overran 
all  that  bright  world  beyond  the 
hills,  beyond  the  skies — and  she 
came  to  herself  after  what  seemed  to 
her  a  vision  of  Will  driving  tlirough 
the  snow,  under  the  blue  sky,  the 
wind  whistling  about  him,  on  his 
errands  of  love  and  mercy — came  to 
herself  with  a  little  start,  to  find 
Lawrence  Berkeley  sitting  beside 
her.  But  as  they  walked  home 
together,  his  dissection  of  the 
scherzo,  and  his  quick  humming  for 
a  moment  of  one  of  the  tunes  of  the 
dance  music,  as  they  went  swiftly 
up  the  avenue,  made  her  feel  as  if  she 
were  dancing  it  with  him,  and  gave 
another  complexion  to  her  thoughts. 
They  had  come  home  from  the 
opera  the  next  evening — for  the 
opera  paid  no  heed  to  Lent  that  year 


174      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

— and  there  Josephine  had  seen  Rob 
Campbell,  to  whom  some  one  had 
given  a  ticket.  She  knew  him,  and 
he  knew  her,  of  course,  bowing  with 
glad  recognition  to  her  across  the 
house.  But  he  seemed  as  far  off  as 
if  he  were  in  the  antipodes.  And 
that  fact,  so  slight  in  itself,  so 
weighty  in  its  relation  to  her  home, 
her  past,  and  her  pledged  and 
promised  future,  had  suddenly  made 
her  see  more  strongly  than  anything 
else  had  done,  that  she  was  in  dan- 
ger— in  danger  of  being-  made  cap- 
tive and  held  in  this  life,  so  far  from 
her  old  life  and  all  she  had  loved 
in  it.  It  had  made  her  very  grave ; 
she  hardly  knew  why. 

Mrs.  Applegate,  who  had  sent 
Josephine  under  convoy,  going  her- 
self to  a  lecture  on  "The  Puritan  at 
the  Base  of  Our  Civilization, ' '  and 
coming  in  with  some  stir  in  season 
for  Tannhauser's  song  in  praise  of 
Venus,  had  now  left  the  room  a 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      175 

moment,  and  Josephine,  going  to 
the  pianoforte,  was  trying  over,  as 
she  stood,  an  air  that  lingered  in  her 
memory.  The  tune  did  not  come 
quite  clearly,  and  she  had  sat  down 
to  catch  it  in  earnest,  and  Lawrence 
Berkeley  drew  a  seat  for  himself  be- 
side her. 

"It  is  strange,"  she  said,  "how  a 
tune  will  haunt  some  inner  sense 
that  cannot  express  it. ' ' 

"That  is  because  music  belongs  to 
another  world,"  said  he;  "because 
it  is 

'A  tone 

Of  some  world  far  from  ours, 
Where  music  and  moonlight  and  feeling  are 
one.' 

I  never  felt  that,  though,  half  so 
strongly  till  I  heard  you  sing. 
There  is  something  so  penetrating," 
he  said,  leaning  his  head  on  his  hand 
as  his  arm  rested  on  the  piano,  and 
looking  at  her  with  a  strange  light  in 
the  dark  depths  of  his  eyes,  "so 


176      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

touching,  in  your  voice,  it  seems  the 
voice  of  music  itself.  You  must 
have  loved  music  always. ' ' 

"Always,"  said  Josephine,  briefly, 
still  trying  to  find  the  air. 

"How  I  should  like  to  take  you 
where  you  could  hear  the  Venetian 
gondoliers  as  they  sing  in  their  soft, 
melodious  dialect!  Do  you  know — 
may  I  say — that  if  there  were  a 
heaven — yes,  there  must  be  for  such 
as  you — my  idea  of  its  supremest 
bliss  is  sometking  the  same  as  if  I 
were  to  hear  you  sing  forever — 
were  to -have  your  voice  beside  me 
whenever  I  turn  to  it!  For,  speak- 
ing or  singing,  there  is  no  such 
music  for  my  ear — Josephine!" 

He  was  bending  towards  her, 
gazing  full  in  her  eyes  with  his  own, 
his  lips  near  hers,  his  arms  ready  to 
gather  her  in.  Was  she  listening, 
as  she  sat  there,  silent  now,  her 
head  bent?  In  the  dim  light,  through 
which  a  statue  gleamed,  a  mirror 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      177 

glanced,  a  painting  gathered  color 
into  itself  and  hinted  of  its  unre- 
vealed  beauty,  in  the  luxurious 
warmth  and  the  perfume  of  the 
bedded  roses  near,  was  she  yielding 
— swaying  towards  him? 

Who  can  say?  For  at  that  moment 
there  came  a  peal  of  the  door-bell 
that  startled  the  echoes  from  one  end 
to  the  other  of  the  great  house,  and 
Mr.  Boylston  hurried  in,  half  breath- 
less, the  moment  the  door  was 
opened. 

"Josephine!"  he  gasped  in  the 
hall.  "I  want  Josephine!  Where  is 
she?  Bertie — little  Bertie  wants  her. 
She  must  come — he  is  crying  for  her 
—he  is  very — ill!" 

"Bertie!" 

"Bertie.  The  doctor  said  to-day 
he  must  be  denied  nothing.  Frances 
is  in  hysterics.  I  don't  know  if — if 
he  will  get  well.  Can't  you  come, 
Josephine?  The  little  fellow  took 
such  a  fancy  to  you — talks  of  you — 


178      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

came  round  so  to  see  you,  you  know 
— and  he  keeps  saying,  'The  lady 
that  sings,  the  lady  that  sings.' 
We  can  hardly  make  it  out — his 
voice  is  so  thick  and  weak — but  that 
is  what  it  is.  Is  this  your  cloak?  I 
have  a  cab — the  horses  were  put  up. 
I—" 

"Of  course.  Why,  of  course," 
cried  Josephine,  the  instant  she 
understood  him,  and  pulling  up  her 
cloak.  "I  won't  keep  you  a  minute. 
I'm  so  glad  if  the  dear  little  fellow 
wants  me  and  I  can  go!  I'm  so  used 
to  children,  you  know.  Good-night, 
Mr.  Berkeley.  You'll  tell  my  aunt 
about  it,  please."  And  before 
Lawrence  Berkeley  could  remon- 
strate, or  Mrs.  Applegate  knew  what 
was  happening,  Josephine  was  in  the 
cab  and  driving  to  comfort  the  sick 
child. 

Frances  Boylston  forgot  all  her 
jealousies  and  dreads  when  she  saw 
the  girl  come  in,  radiant  in  the  rose- 


THE   MAID    HE   MARRIED      179 

color  and  swan's-down  of  her  cloak, 
the  frosty  freshness  in  her  cheek, 
the  splendor  in  her  eyes.  She 
waited  only  for  the  out-door  chill  to 
pass,  and  then  led  Josephine  upstairs, 
not  even  pausing  to  think  if  the  physi- 
cians, who  had  said  that  skill  could  do 
no  more,  would  have  allowed  her  to  go. 

"Here  she  is,  my  darling  boy," 
the  mother  whispered,  as  they  went 
into  the  room  that  seemed  to  be  dark 
with  the  steam  and  odor  of  drugs, 
before  the  nurse  turned  up  the  light 
a  moment. 

"The  lady  that  sings,"  muttered 
the  boy,  with  a  thick,  strange 
utterance,  but  with  a  glow  on  his 
glad  white  face,  surveying  the 
beautiful  apparition,  and  trying  to 
hold  out  his  feeble  little  hand. 
"Now  sing!"  And  Josephine  sat 
down  beside  him  and  began  to  sing: 

"  Soft  fall  the  feet  of  the  little  Christ  Child, 
Walking  abroad  when  the  winds  are  wild ; 
Dropping  his  blessing  on  each  dear  head 


l8o      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

Where  the  children  sleep  in  their  snowy 

bed; 

Shining  clear  in  the  moon's  white  beam, 
Where    the    children    sleep,    where    the 

children  dream. ' ' 

As  she  sang,  the  hot  eyelids 
drooped,  but  as  she  ceased  they 
sprang  open  again,  and  she  began 
another  strain.  Cradle-songs,  lul- , 
labies,  hymns,  she  sang  softly, 
sweetly,  untiringly,  for  an  hour. 
The  child  lifted  his  arms  to  her  to 
be  taken,  his  mother  sometimes 
kneeling  on  the  other  side,  some- 
times distractedly  walking  the  room 
from  end  to  end.  Occasionally  he 
slept,  and  then  she  rested  as  she 
could  in  the  drowsy  atmosphere  of 
the  dim  place.  A  whistle  from  a 
rushing  train  far  out  in  the  night 
awoke  him,  and  she  began  again. 
The  carriages  rolling  home  from 
late  pleasures — how  foreign  they 
seemed !  How  little  part  such  things 
had  in  the  real  things  of  life !  She 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      l8l 

had  a  feeling  that  if  Will  were 
only  here  this  child  might  live. 
She  was  tired,  holding  the  child  in  a 
constrained  attitude  and  singing. 
But  what  of  that?  she  had  danced  to 
more  fatigue  many  a  night  that 
winter.  When  he  opened  his  eyes 
again  she  began  to  sing  once  more ; 
and  when  he  closed  them  her  voice 
lulled  away,  still  murmuring  with 
music  half  under  the  breath;  and 
Mr.  Boylston  drowsed  on  the  lounge, 
and  the  nurse  moved  gently  here  and 
there,  and  the  mother  still  knelt 
beside  Josephine  and  the  boy. 

The  gray  dawn  was  coming  in,  and 
she  was  singing, 

' '  I  think,  when  I  read  that  sweet  story  of  old, 

When  Jesus  was  here  among  men, 
How  he  called  little  children  as  lambs  to 

his  fold, 

I  should  like  to  have  been  with  them 
then," 

when  the  child  looked  up  with  quite 
clear  eyes  a  moment. 


l8z      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Mamma,"  he  murmured.  They 
could  just  make  it  out. 

"Oh,  what — what  is  it,  my  dar- 
ling?" the  mother  cried. 

"Is  she  one  of  them — one  of  the 
angels  singing  there?"  And  then, 
with  his  eyes  wide  open  on  the  angels 
singing  there,  the  child  was  dead. 

Josephine  went  home  and  to  bed, 
Mrs.  Bulfmch  coming  to  comfort 
her  sister.  Wrought  to  the  last 
point  of  tension  by  the  night,  with 
its  fatigues  and  sorrows,  Josephine 
slept  heavily;  and  her  head  ached 
too  much  the  next  evening  when  she 
awoke  to  let  her  rise,  and  she  was  too 
shocked  and  pained  to  wish  to  rise. 

The  dear  little  boy,  the  only  one 
among  all  the  outside  members  of 
the  family  who  had  given  her  affec- 
tion! She  cried  till  her  head  ached 
again  while  thinking  of  him.  And 
then  death  had  come  so  suddenly, 
so  darkly,  in  the  midst  of  all  the 
splendid  movement  and  gayety — for 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      183 

Lent  had  made  little  difference  other 
than  that  of  changing  the  character 
of  the  gayety — and  a  song  she  knew 
kept  running  through  her  head — 

"  Dust    and    ashes,    dead  and  done  with, 

Venice  spent  what  Venice  earned ! 
The  soul,  doubtless,  is  immortal — where  a 
soul  can  be  discerned." 

Venice,  indeed!  She  had  all  she 
wanted  of  this  sort  of  Venice.  Her 
little  home  in  the  hills  seemed  a 
place  to  be  longed  for,  a  nest  of 
innocence  and  safety  now. 

Her  devotion  to  the  little  dead  boy 
was  known  all  over  town  by  the  time 
of  the  funeral.  Every  one  left  cards, 
every  one  sent  flowers  to  her;  there 
were  never  seen  any  such  as  Law- 
rence Berkeley  sent.  She  received 
no  one ;  she  sent  down  no  messages ; 
and  Lawrence  Berkeley  cursed  the 
fate  that  had  snatched  from  his  lips 
the  draught  full  of  all  the  sweetness 
of  life.  Her  uncle,  who  had  felt 


184      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

very  sore  over  the  death  of  his  little 
grandson — Laura's  children  were  all 
girls — was  now  full  of  anxiety  about 
Josephine,  who  lay  in  a  singular  state 
of  weakness,  sick  all  over  and  all 
through,  caring  for  nothing,  now 
and  then  a  big  tear  welling  under 
her  closed  lids,  languid,  listless, 
wrapt  in  melancholy  thought. 

For  Josephine  was  very  unhappy. 
A  flash  of  lightning  had  illuminated 
the  dark  recesses  of  her  being ;  she 
saw  herself  forsaking  all  that  had 
been  her  life — her  poor  careworn 
mother,  her  home,  and  everything 
it  meant — simply  for  the  love  of 
pleasure.  She  saw  herself  on  the 
point  of  treachery  to  Will,  Will  who 
was  her  very  life,  her  self !  If  she  had 
not  been  called  away  at  the  instant, 
she  might  have  done  all  this.  She 
had!  And  she  was  only  now  repent- 
ing it !  She  felt  as  if  the  little  child 
had  died  to  save  her.  She  felt  as  if 
she  were  responsible  for  that,  guilty 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      185 

of  it.  She  felt  powerless,  restless, 
feverish,  choked,  dying.  She  looked 
so.  You  would  hardly  have  known 
it  was  Josephine.  And  her  uncle 
presently  brought  in  his  own  doctor, 
quite  another  man  from  Mrs.  Boyl- 
ston's  physician;  and  he,  in  a  fine 
rage,  asked  why  he  had  not  been 
called  before  to  a  patient  in  this 
advanced  stage  of  disease.  And 
then  Mr.  Applegate  made  some  very 
strong  remarks  about  Frances,  to 
repent  of  them  as  quickly.  Jose- 
phine had  not  known  before  exactly 
what  had  ailed  little  Bertie.  "Oh, 
Will,  Will!"  she  moaned.  "You 
must  send  for  him.  He  knows  all 
about  it — he  is  a  doctor — he  can  cure 
me — no  one  else  can.  Will,  my 
dear  Will — I  must  have  him  here. ' ' 
Her  aunt,  full  of  anxiety,  full  of 
fear,  full  of  solicitude,  probed  her 
with  questioning,  and  then  all  the 
burden  escaped.  And  Mr.  Apple- 
gate,  wild  with  anger  and  wild  with 


1 86      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

fright  together,  had  telegraphed  for 
Will,  and  there  Will  was  in  Jose- 
phine's room  now. 

"Frances  is  a  wicked  woman," 
roared  Mr.  Applegate,  waiting  below, 
"to  have  risked  this  girl's  life  so!  If 
she  dies — " 

"Oh,  she  will  not,  she  cannot 
die!"  exclaimed  his  wife,  in  a  tran- 
sport of  apprehension  herself,  vainly 
trying  to  dismiss  it.  And  then  they 
waited  for  the  reassuring  word. 
Mr.  Applegate  came  over  and 
stroked  his  wife's  hair  caressingly. 
"She  made  us  love  her  very  much, 
didn't  she?"  he  said.  And  he 
strode  away  again,  angry  with  his 
wife's  sobs  and  his  own  thoughts. 
"Why  am  I  upset  in  this  way  about 
a  child  I  had  never  seen  a  year 
ago?  Why  should  I  be  concerned  as 
to  whether  she  lives  or  dies?" 
stormed  Mr.  Applegate,  downstairs. 

"She  is  not  going  to  die,"  calmly 
said  Will,  upstairs. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED       187 

"I'm  not  afraid  of  it.  I've  been 
exposed  to  it.  I  will  go  in,  sir," 
exclaimed  Mr.  Applegate,  five 
minutes  afterwards,  at  the  door  of 
the  anteroom  to  the  sick-chamber. 

' '  I  cannot  allow  you  to  go  in, ' '  said 
Dr.  Will.  And  for  once  in  his  life 
the  elder  gentleman  found  his 
master. 

But  calm  as  Will  was  without,  his 
heart  was  beating  like  a  trip-ham- 
mer within,  and  every  nerve  was 
bristling  with  electric  force.  He 
was  dealing  with  a  tremendous 
enemy;  an  enemy  that  assaulted 
with  sapping  and  mining  and  drain- 
ing of  strength,  with  poisoning  the 
blood  and  the  brain.  But  he  had 
met  the  enemy  countless  times 
before  up  among  the  hills;  he  had 
the  benefit  of  old  Dr.  Madden's 
experience  behind  him;  he  was 
young  and  fresh  in  his  wrestle  with 
evil ;  he  had  the  last  word  of  science 
himself;  he  knew  how  to  work.  He 


1 88      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

gave  himself  no  sleep;  he  sum- 
moned every  force  he  had;  he 
allowed  no  one  in  the  room  but  the 
nurses  and  Dr.  Fleischmann,  and  he 
never  paused  to  think  if  he  were 
laboring  in  this  costly  disregard  of 
strength  to  save  his  treasure  for  an- 
other— for  that  pale,  dark  fellow 
haunting  the  door ;  he  merely  meant 
to  save  her.  And  he  did. 

It  was  not  till  Josephine  was 
entirely  out  of  danger,  and  removed 
into  another  room,  and  a  thorough 
fumigation  had  been  completed,  that 
Mr.  Applegate  was  allowed  to  have 
his  way,  so  overjoyed  then  as  to  for- 
get all  the  hard  things  he  had  said 
about  having  the  doors  in  his  own 
house  shut  in  his  face. 

"Now,"  said  Dr.  Will,  who  in  the 
last  weeks  had  gone  and  come,  "I 
resign  my  patient  to  you,  sir,  and  to 
Dr.  Fleischmann.  I  have  patients  at 
home  waiting  for  me,  and  must  take 
the  night  train  up,  not  to  return. ' ' 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      189 

"Will,"  whispered  a  feeble  voice 
from  the  lounge  where  Josephine 
lay,  a  pallid,  big-eyed,  little  wreck 
of  Josephine,  "I  must  go,  too." 

"Not  to-day,"  said  Will,  gently. 

"Then  you  must  stay  till  I  can 
go.  Oh,  Will,  you  act  as  if  you  had 
not  forgiven  me !  You  have  acted  so 
ever  since  you  came.  It  made  me 
cold — it  made  me  shiver  to  see  you. 
I  felt  I  couldn't  get  well.  I  didn't 
care  if  I  didn't  get  well.  Have  I 
grown  so  horrid — do  you  suppose — 
oh,  let  me  see!" 

"Hush,  dear;  hush!"  said  Will. 

"No,  no,"  she  murmured,  husk- 
ily. "I  must  know  now!  If  you 
came  to  cure  me,"  with  a  sort  of 
eager  breathlessness,  "just  as  you 
would  go  to  cure  any  one — if  you  are 
going  away  because  you  think  I — I 
— that  I  was  going  to  be  untrue — or 
because  I  have  lost  all  my  pretty 
face — ' ' 

"But  this  is  childish,   Josephine, 


190      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

dear  one,  and  I  have  asked  you  not 
to  excite  yourself. ' ' 

"Oh,  but  you  know  the  pretty  face 
will  come  back — even  if  I  never  have 
my  voice  again !  But  if  you  have  left 
off  loving  me,  Will — "  sighed  the 
piteous  little  tones. 

"Hush!  hush,  my  darling!  you 
haven't  any  strength  to  waste.  I 
have  never  left  off  loving  you." 

"But  you  have  left  off  having  any 
faith  in  me !  You — " 

"Dearest,"  he  said,  in  an  under- 
tone, "you  forget — " 

"Oh,  I  had  just  as  lief  Uncle 
Applegate  heard  every  word  I  said ! 
He  loves  me,  at  any  rate,  I  know. 
I  am  willing  he  should  know  every 
thought  I  think.  He  believes  in 
me!" 

"Josephine,  my  darling,"  he 
whispered,  "if  you  had  given  your 
promise  to  a  prince  of  the  reigning 
family  himself,  I  should  have  known 
your  heart  was  mine,  and  should 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      1 9 1 

have  come  down  and  claimed  my 
own.  Are  you  satisfied  now?"  And 
he  laughed  like  the  old  Will. 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Josephine,  gazing 
up  at  him  with  her  great  hollow 
eyes,  darker  now  than  darkest  cairn- 
gorm. ' '  I  am  afraid  you  say  it  only 
to  keep  me  quiet." 

"Very  well,  then,"  said  Will. 
"Only  keep  quiet." 

And  then  he  knelt  beside  her,  and 
plainer  than  any  wordy  protest  could 
have  done,  the  kiss  he  gave  her  told 
whether  or  not  he  loved  her. 

And,  as  you  may  suppose,  during 
these  moments,  Mr.  Applegate  was 
very  uneasy.  "Do  you  mean,"  he 
cried  now — "do  you  mean,  sir,  that 
just  as  her  aunt  and  I  have  become 
attached  to  her,  have  found  her 
indispensable,  you  are  going  to  take 
her  away?" 

"I  have  been  attached  to  her," 
said  Will,  "ever  since  I  have  known 
her. ' ' 


192      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"But  I  had  other  views  for  her, 
sir — other  views!  Views  very  much 
to  her  advantage.  I  must  insist 
upon  my  rights!  Yes,  I  may  call 
them  my  rights!"  exclaimed  Uncle 
Applegate,  beginning  to  storm  up 
and  down  tha  room. 

"I  suppose,  Mr.  Applegate,"  said 
Will,  "that  what  we  both  desire  is 
her  happiness — " 

"Oh,  and  you  mustn't  think  me 
ungrateful,"  piped  up  the  feeble 
voice.  "I  love  you,  too.  But  Will 
is  my  own  self — he  always  was — and 
I  thought  you  knew — I  mean,  I 
didn't  think—" 

"This  will  never  do,"  said  Mr. 
Applegate.  "I  can't  have  her  dis- 
turbed in  this  way.  You  must  go 
now — I  beg  your  pardon — I  really — 
But  if  you  are  going,  you  see  your- 
self that  you  had  best  go  now,  at  any 
rate. ' ' 

"Then  I  must  go,  too,"  she 
urged. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      193 

"By  Jove!"  then  cried  Mr.  Apple- 
gate,  with  the  sudden  shift  tempes- 
tuous forces  are  apt  to  make.  "He 
shan't  go  at  all.  He  shall  stay 
here.  He  shall  come  here  and 
practice.  It's  high  time  of  day  if  we 
can't  have  confidence  in  our  little 
girl's  choice.  He  shall  come  here 
and  practice — there's  plenty  of  room 
at  the  top.  What  do  you  say  to 
that,  Mrs.  Applegate?"  For  his 
wife  had  been  detained  downstairs, 
and  was  just  coming  into  the  room 
with  some  Easter  lilies  in  her  hand. 
"A  fellow  that  can  start  in  on  equal 
terms  with  Fleischmann,  can  beat 
him  on  his  own  ground,  is  pretty 
sure  of  success.  Besides,  I  like  his 
pluck,  his  grit — got  a  regular  bull- 
dog grip — won't  give  up  our  little 
Josephine.  Jove!  I  don't  blame 
him.  Come,  young  man,  sell  out 
your  practice  to  some  other  young 
sawbones  up  there  in  the  wilderness. 
No  more  driving  over  quagmires 


194      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

and  across  rivers  in  the  snow-storms 
and  the  midnights.  I  know  what  a 
country  doctor's  life  is.  We'll  give 
you  a  clientele  that  goes  off  to  its 
country-seats  every  summer,  and 
leaves  you  four  months  for  play,  for 
study,  for  Europe,  for  the  land's- 
end — " 

"Oh,  my  dear,  my  dear!"  cried 
Mrs.  Applegate. 

"Yes,"  said  her  husband,  walk- 
ing up  and  down  the  room,  and 
pervading  it  after  his  wont,  "this 
house  is  quite  large  enough  for  all 
our  purposes  put  together.  Why, 
it  is  an  immense  house,  you  know! 
I  always  wondered  what  we  wanted 
such  a  house  for.  Now  I  see !  The 
reception-room  on  the  right  for  you, 
the  room  behind  it  for  your  office — 
the  little  writing  room  off  that — we 
no  more  need  those  rooms,  Mrs. 
Applegate,"  turning  to  his  wife, 
"than  we  do  the  fifth  wheel  of  a 
coach!  And — " 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      195, 

"But  my  mother!  My  poor  dear 
mother!"  whispered  Josephine. 

"You  can  go  to  see  her  whenever 
you  wish,"  said  her  uncle,  with  the 
solemnity  of  one  making  a  vow, 
"oftener,  very  like,  than  if  you  lived 
in  the  same  town  with  her.  She  can 
come  down  and  see  you — make  a 
change  for  her — go  to  the  theater. 
That  little  Agnes  you  tell  of  can  go 
on  with  your  school  you've  had  so 
much  to  say  about, '  or  we  can  do 
better  for  her.  She  can  marry  that 
young  sawbones — By  Jove !  perhaps 
it  will  be  that  fellow  with  the 
scholarship  over  here.  Oh,  I've  had 
my  eyes  out  all  the  time,  Missy." 

"And  have  my  little  house  with 
the  bay-window,"  cried  Mrs.  Apple- 
gate. 

"And  so  we  will  make  one  family 
here,"  said  her  husband.  "That  is 
settled." 

"I— I  couldn't  think  of  it,"  stam- 
mered Dr.  Will. 


1 96      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

"Why  can't  you  think  of  it? 
You've  got  to  think  of  it!  That's  all 
there  is  about  it!"  exclaimed  Mr. 
Applegate.  "It's  done!  It's  the 
only  condition  on  which  I  withdraw 
my  opposition.  I'll  take  Josephine 
and  my  wife  and  go  off  to  parts 
where  I'll  defy  you  to  find  me,  and 
never  come  back,  if  you  don't  agree, 
and  agree  at  once !  You  run  up  now, 
my  boy,"  said  Uncle  Applegate, 
going  over  and  laying  his  hands  on 
Will's  shoulders,  "and  put  things 
there  in  train.  You  must  think  of 
other  people  than  yourself — you 
really  must.  You  must  think  of  us, 
two  lonely  old  persons  in  our  empty 
house.  Come  down — Where  is  an  al- 
manac?— a  calendar — they're  usually 
tumbling  round  under  your  feet  all 
over  the  house  when  you  don't  want 
them!  Oh,  here — well,  let  me  see 
— this  is — how — ha — come  down  say 
just  before  Whitsunday  to  stay. 
I'll  have  Josephine  all  well  and 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      197 

strong  and  rosy  again  by  that  time, 
and  I'll  have  a  brass  plate  engraved 
for  your  side  of  the  door,  and  you'll 
do  well  here — you'll  do  well!" 
dropping  his  calendar,  and  walking 
up  and  down  again,  and  rumpling 
his  hair.  "I'm  entirely  selfish  in 
this  business, "  he  said.  "I'm  put- 
ting you  under  no  obligation.  On 
the  other  hand,  you're  obliging  me. 
I've  had  a  happiness,  your  aunt  has 
had  a  happiness,  come  into  our  life 
that  we  are  not  going  to  lose  out  of 
it." 

"But,  my  dear  sir,  my  kind — " 

"Oh,  nothing  of  the  sort!  Quite 
the  contrary!  Just  give  me  your 
assurance!" 

"But,"  said  Will,  with  his  eyes  on 
Josephine,  "if  I — if  we— accept  your 
goodness, .  still  Josephine  should  be 
married  at  home,  and — " 

"This  is  her  home!"  roared  Mr. 
Applegate.  "By  Jove!  this  is  her 
home,  and  is  always  going  to  be.  I 


198      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

shall  run  no  risk  of  having  her  leave 
it  under  any  sort  of  promise. ' ' 

"He — he  means  he  can't  trust 
me,"  sighed  Josephine. 

"Take  it  any  way  you  please. 
Only  do  as  I  say.  I  don't  believe 
any  young  man  from  the  country 
ever  had  a  better  chance  offered 
him.  But  of  that  I  will  never  speak 
again. ' ' 

4'0h,  Will,  Will—" 

"Yes,  I  know,"  continued  Mr. 
Applegate.  "  To  do  the  proper  thing 
you  should  repent  your  flirtations, 
and  abjure  society  and  money  and 
luxur)r  and  gayety  and  your  aunt 
and  me,  and  go  back  to  the  small 
house  and  the  narrow  way.  But 
you  are  going  to  do  nothing  of  the 
kind.  Rich  people  have  some 
rights.  I've  a  right  to  a  sunny  old 
age,  as  sunny  as  the  gout  will  suffer 
it  to  be — since  I've  found  the  way  to 
have  it.  And  have  it  I  will!  And 
you  don't  go  out  of  this  house,  Dr. 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      199 

Will  Marley,  till  I  have  your  word, 
and  there's  an  end  of  it."  And 
then  Mr.  Applegate  crossed  the  room 
again,  and  took  Will's  hands  in  his. 
"I  want  you  to  understand, ' '  he  said, 
"that  you're  my*  son.  And  I  think 
I  shall  have  more  satisfaction  out  of 
you  than  I  have  out  of  my  other 
children's  husbands.  And  I  promise 
you,  we  won't  be  very  much  in  the 
way,  your  aunt  and  I."  And  with 
a  burst  of  emotion  he  threw  an  arm 
round  Will,  and  then  he  kissed  him, 
Will  blushing  like  a  girl  the  while. 
"Besides,"  said  Mr.  Applegate, 
"it's  very  handy  to  have  a  doctor  in 
the  house." 

"But  Frances!"  said  Mrs.  Apple- 
gate. 

"And  Laura — "  said  Josephine. 

"Laura  thinks  whatever  Frances 
thinks,  you  know, ' '  said  their  father. 
"And  Frances  feels  as  if  Josephine 
were  very  near  her  child — the  dear 
little  boy !  And  she  is  as  full  of  grati- 


200      THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED 

tilde,  as — well,  as  Frances  can  be. 
She  has  been  round  here  to  inquire 
every  day,  you  know,  and  she  has 
even  said  that  if  Dr.  Will  had  had 
the  case  he  might  have  saved  the 
boy.  I  don't  think  so,  though — I 
don't  think  so.  Bertie  didn't  belong 
to  the  earth.  And — and  Frances  is 
an  Applegate,  after  all.  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  it  ended  by  your  having  an 
affectionate  sister  in  her.  It  isn't 
as  if  there  were  not  enough  and  to 
spare  for  all !  And  if  you  can  think 
of  a  pleasanter  way  to  spend  the 
honey-moon,  or  any  other  moon, 
than  by  sailing  in  a  yacht  through 
the  Mediterranean  waters,  along  the 
shores  of  Africa,  in  summer  seas  and 
under  summer  skies,  touching 
strange  Italian  cities  and  exploring 
Grecian  ruins,  old  temples  and 
palaces,  between-whiles,  orange 
boughs  heaped  on  the  deck — your 
aunt  and  me  along  —  why,  I 
should  like  to  have  you  mention 


THE    MAID    HE    MARRIED      2OI 

it.  For  that's  what  we're  going 
to  do. ' ' 

And  then,  as,  a  little  while  after- 
wards, Mr.  Applegate  left  the  lovers 
together  and  stamped  downstairs, 
he  said  to  his  wife  on  the  way:  "It's 
the  luckiest  day's  work  we've  done 
for  a  long  time.  If  she  had  married 
Berkeley,  he'd  have  taken  her  away; 
and  now  we  have  her  for  good  and 
all.  And  I'll  be  hanged  if  my  mil- 
lions aren't  as  good  as  Berkeley's 
are,  by  Jove!" 

"My  dear,  what  has  that  to  do 
with  it?" 

"A  great  deal,  you  will  find," 
said  Uncle  Applegate.  "And  the 
more  I  think  of  it,  the  more  I  am 
sure  that  a  fresh,  courageous,  noble, 
healthy  young  chap,  like  this  Dr. 
Will  of  ours,  is  better  worth  bringing 
into  the  family  than  a  fellow  with 
— well,  with  a  history.  I  never  did 
want  our  little  pink  pearl  of  a  girl  to 
marry  Lawrence  Berkeley,  anyway!" 


PRINTED    AT    THE    LAKESIDE    PRESS 

FOR   HERBERT  S.    STONE   &   CO. 

PUBLISHERS,   CHICAGO 


The 

Maid  He  Married 
'•'By. 

HarrietfrescottSpofford 


